*  MAR  12  1907  * 

« 


m  240  .S3513  1906 
Ichmid,  Rudolf,  1828-1907 
The  scientific  creed  of  a 
theologian 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  CREED  OF 
A  THEOLOGIAN 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   CREED 
OF  A  THEOLOGIAN 


</?Y 


RUDOLF     SCHMID,    D.D. 


LATE   COURT    CHAPLAIN 


TRANSLATED    FROM    THE    SECOND    GERMAN    EDITION    BY 

J.  W.  STOUGHTON,  B.A.  (Camb.) 


NEW  YORK 

A.    C.    ARMSTRONG    AND    SON 

3  &  5  WEST  EIGHTEENTH  ST 

1906 


THE  ABERDEEN   UNIVERSITY  PRESS   LIMITED 


DEDICATED    WITH    GRATEFUL    ESTEEM 
TO    THE 

PROTESTANT  THEOLOGICAL  FACULTY 
OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  TÜBINGEN 


(y) 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION 

The  immediate  reason   for   undertaking  the 
present  work,  was  the  honour  conferred  upon 
me  by  the  reception  of  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Divinity  at  the  hands  of  the   Protestant 
Theological    Faculty    of   the    University    of 
Tübingen  in  the   year    1897.     I   felt  that   * 
ought  to  show  my  gratitude  by  way  of  some 
literary  production,  but   I    could  not  embark 
upon  the  work  this  involved  until  I  had  not 
only   retired    from    my  official    position,    but 
also  given  up  many  other  duties  connected 
with  it,  and  found  time  to  follow  up  my  read- 
ing of  some  of  the  more  recent  and  important 
scientific  works,  for    the  study  of  which   my 
profession  had  not  allowed  me  the  necessary 
leisure. 

(vii) 


viii        PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION 

But  this  reason  was  accompanied  by  a 
much  deeper  motive.  Throughout  my  life  the 
boundaries  of  Natural  Science  and  Theology 
and  Philosophy  have  been  a  favourite  subject 
of  reflection.  In  the  year  1876  when  the 
full  stress  of  the  intellectual  movement  started 
by  Darwin  had  reached  its  highest  point,  I 
published  a  book  entitled  :  The  Theories  of 
Darwin  and  Their  Relation  to  Philosophy, 
Religion  and  Morality.  This  was  translated 
into  English  by  G.  A.  Zimmerman,  Ph.D., 
with  an  introduction  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll, 
and  published  in  America  (Chicago  ;  Jansen, 
MacClurg  and  Co.,  1883). 

It  affords  me  no  small  satisfaction  to  see 
that  not  only  do  the  upholders  of  religion 
more  and  more  assume  the  same  standpoint 
to  which  I  at  that  time  adhered,  but  that 
also  in  the  past  twenty-nine  years  Science  has 
taken  the  very  path  which  I  then  anticipated. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION  ix 

I  am  not  aware  of  anything  I  have  said 
in  that  book  which  I  should  now  take 
back,  except  some  of  my  statements  on  the 
relation  of  Science  to  the  Biblical  Record 
of  Creation.  At  that  time  I  had  studied  the 
Old  Testament  only  for  a  brief  period  and 
I  had  allowed  myself  to  be  guided  by 
August  Dillmann's  Commentary  on  Genesis. 
The  method  thus  adopted  I  have  subsequently 
abandoned. 

The  subject  is  indeed  one  of  contemporary 
interest.  Book  after  book  has  been  published 
on  these  questions,  but  the  standpoint  I  take 
up  is  still  characteristic,  inasmuch  as  I  de- 
mand perfect  freedom  for  Science,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  adhere  to  the  truths 
of  Christianity  in  their  full  extent.  I  have 
also  endeavoured  not  to  shun  any  problems, 
however  knotty  and  difficult. 

May  this  study   not  only  aid    readers    on 


x  PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION 

either  side  to  get  the  true  bearings  of  the 
questions  at  issue,  but  also  help  many  who 
may  be  troubled  about  the  loud  conflict  be- 
tween Science  and  Christianity,  or  Religion 
and  Culture,   to  find  rest  for  their  minds! 

RUDOLF  SCHMID. 

Stuttgart. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 


PAGE 

xiii 


CHAPTER   I 
Creation  as  a  Whole,  Considered  from  the 
Scientific  and   the  Religious   Point  of 
View T 

CHAPTER   II 
The    Conception  of  Creation  as  Recorded 

in  the  Bible I5 

CHAPTER   III 
Religion     and    the    Scientific    Record    of 

Creation 45 

(xi) 


xii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   IV 


PAGE 


Providence,  Prayer  and  Miracles         -         -     172 

CHAPTER  V 
The  Person  of  Jesus  Christ         -         -         -     204 


INTRODUCTION 

Any  one  who  undertakes  to  publish  a  plea 
for  an  understanding  between  Science  and 
Christianity,  will  perhaps  help  his  readers  to 
get  their  bearings  best  by  first  explaining 
as  briefly  and  definitely  as  possible  the 
standpoint  which  he  takes  up  himself,  and 
from  which  he  pursues  his  inquiry.  Well, 
the  standpoint  which  during  a  long  life  I 
have  always  taken  up,  and  with  which  I 
have  always  been  well  satisfied,  is,  briefly 
put,  that  of  absolute  peace  between  the 
two.  Whether  the  two  opposing  factors, 
whose  peaceable  solution  now  demands  our 
attention,  be  named  Science  and  Theology, 
or  more  generally  embraced  under  the  terms 
Knowledge  and  Faith — a  scientific  and  a 
religious   view  of  life — Modern  Culture  and 


(xiii 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

Christian  conviction — or  (sharpest  antithesis 
of  all)  Causality  and  Teleology — what  is 
certain  to  my  mind  is  the  fact  from  which 
I  have  always  set  out,  which  has  always 
led  me  to  an  absolutely  harmonious  solution, 
viz.,  that  the  two  factors  cannot  contradict 
one  another,  because  Truth  can  only  be 
One  ;  indeed  that  contradictions  first  emerge 
where  one  or  another  of  the  two  factors 
oversteps  its  proper  bounds. 

Note, — For  readers  who  are  less  intimate 
with  philosophical  language,  let  me  explain 
that  the  term  "Causality"  means  a  view  of 
natural  facts  and  occurrences  which  demands 
Cause  and  Effect,  whereas  "Teleology"  means 
a  view  that  demands  End  and  Purpose  (in 
Nature).  That  which  from  the  point  of 
view  of  Causality  is  Effect,  becomes,  from 
the  point  of  view  of  Teleology,  Purpose  and 
Object ;  that  which  from  the  point  of  Causality 
is  Cause,  becomes,  from  the  point  of  view 
of  Teleology,  Means  to  an  End.      The  word 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

Causality  comes  from  the  Latin  word  "  causa  " 
(''cause,"  Greek  "aitia"),  the  word  Teleology 
from  the  Greek  word  "telos"  (Latin  "finis") 
"end,"  not  from   "teleios"    "perfect,"   as   is 
sometimes    asserted.       If    we    wish    to    use 
foreign    synonyms,    then    we    must    oppose 
Causality  to  Finality  or  ^Etiology  to  Teleo- 
logy.     But   in    this   instance   current  custom 
has   been   stronger  than  logic.     The  opinion 
expressed  by    Spinoza  in    the    Appendix    to 
the  first  book  of  his  Ethics,  that  the  recog- 
nition of  causal  connections  in  Nature  would 
eliminate  the  idea  of  purpose  in  Nature,  has 
of   late,    especially   through    Ernst    Häckel's 
popular  scientific  works,   become  a    kind  of 
household    word  ;    it  is   one    of  many    signs 
which  serve  to  show  that  disciples  of  Science 
themselves  are  not  proof  against  catchwords 
and    their    bias.      Any   one   who   wishes   to 
become    more   closely    acquainted    with    this 
question  should  consult  the  excellent  treatise 
"Der    Kampf   gegen    den    Zweck"    ("The 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

Opposition  to  Design  in  Nature"),  in 
the  second  volume  of  the  Kleinen  Schriften 
(Short  Papers)  von  Christoph  Sigzvart 
(Akademische  Buchhandlung  von  J.  C.  B. 
Mohr,  2te  Auflage,   1889). 

This  solution  certainlysounds  simple  enough, 
but  as  soon  as  it  is  applied  in  practice  many 
difficulties  start   up.      In   the  first  place,  the 
boundary  between  Christianity  and  Science  is 
very  large.     It  embraces,  in  fact,  everything 
that  falls  within  the  sphere  of  natural  know- 
ledge.    I    can    regard    all  the  wealth  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole  or  in  detail,   both  from 
a    scientific    and    from    a   religious   point    of 
view,    and    each    will    have    its    claim   to    be 
the    Truth.      But   Truth    can    only   be    One. 
There  cannot  be  anything  at  once  true  from 
a  scientific  point    of   view  and  at   the  same 
time   false    from    a    religious    point    of   view, 
or  vice  versa.     If  I   desire  real   satisfaction, 
I    cannot  be  at   heart  a   Christian   and  with 
my  intellect  an  atheist.      Nay,  there  must  be 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

some  adequate  adjustment  of  the  two  points 
of  view.  To  prove  that  such  an  adjustment 
is  not  only  possible  but  also  absolutely  essential 
to  the  enrichment  and  extension  of  both 
standpoints,  is  the  purpose  of  our  present 
study. 

A  further  difficulty  in  this  adjustment  lies 
in  the  fact  that  Christianity  possesses  docu- 
mentary sources,  namely  The  Holy  Scriptures, 
Now,  we  might  perhaps  imagine  that  all 
possibilities  of  contradiction  between  the  Bible 
and  Science  would  be  removed  once  for  all 
by  showing  that  the  Bible  neither  is  nor 
seeks  to  be  a  Handbook  of  Natural  Science, 
but  only  claims  to  be  the  charter  of  our 
salvation.  The  statement  of  this  truth,  which 
is  often  forgotten  but  self-evident  none  the 
less,  may  help  to  check  superficial  contro- 
versy, but  it  is  far  from  sufficient  to  allay 
the  difficulties  which  are  aroused  by  an 
attempt  to  understand  the  Scriptures  in  rela- 
tion to  the  claims  of  Science.     The  Scriptures 

b 


xviii  INTRODUCTION 

in   their    present   collected   form,   which   has 
lasted    for    the    past    fifteen    hundred    years, 
have  a  still  more  distant  origin  which  carries 
us  back  past  another  fifteen  hundred  years. 
In  the   very  first   chapters  and   the   earliest 
records    of    the    Bible   we    meet   with    two 
accounts  of  the  Creation  of  the  World,  like 
some    magnificent    portal    to    the    Story    of 
God's   Revelation    to    Man.     The  difference 
between  the  conception  of  the  world  which 
that    far-off    age    possessed,    as   we    see    it 
reflected   in   the    Bible   records  of  Creation, 
and  the  conception   by   Modern  Science,   is 
immense  ;  but  it  would  be  hasty  to  infer  that 
the  Biblical  record  cannot  now  possess  more 
than  a  mere  antiquarian  interest.     The  em- 
phasis  laid    upon    the   absolute    causality    of 
the    Creator    in    forming    the   world    and   all 
that  is  therein,    is    of   fundamental    religious 
interest,    and    lifts    the    Bible    narrative    far 
above    those  records    of  other   contemporary 
nations  which   are   in  many  ways   so   nearly 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

related  to  them.  Nay  more.  Even  in  the 
details  of  the  record — which,  we  are  willing 
to  admit,  has  been  coloured  by  a  conception 
of  the  world  superseded  by  that  of  the 
present  day — there  are  statements  which  must 
be  reckoned  as  a  permanent  heritage  of  our 
religious  knowledge.  These  include  the  as- 
sertion in  the  first  Biblical  narrative  that  Man 
was  made  in  the  image  of  God,  and  also, 
in  the  most  pregnant  of  all  allegories,  the 
enigmatic  utterance  concerning  the  relation 
of  Man  and  Woman  and  the  essence,  origin, 
and  consequences  of  sin,  in  the  second 
narrative.  At  what  point,  and  in  what 
manner  are  the  indispensable  and  transitory, 
the  kernel  and  the  shell,  to  be  separated, 
without  a  break  between  my  religious 
and  my  scientific  knowledge,  or  an  in- 
jury done  to  the  former  by  the  latter? 
These  are  questions  which  also  await  a 
solution. 

Our    Faith    further    possesses   a   series   of 


xx  INTRODUCTION 

facts  which  it  cannot  part  with.  Christianity 
is  not  a  mere  theory  ;  it  is  not  a  view  of 
the  world  or  a  number  of  moral  and  religious 
precepts ;  its  foundation  is  based  on  a  series 
of  historical  facts,  especially  on  the  Person, 
Life,  Death,  and  Resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Now  all  the  facts  of  history  fall  within  the 
province  of  scientific  investigation,  primarily 
of  historical  research  and  secondarily,  it  may 
be,  of  natural  history ;  so  that  the  further 
question  arises :  Do  the  historical  facts  on 
which  our  Christian  Faith  rests  bear  the 
test  of  such  investigation  ?  Will  not  our 
knowledge  of  these  facts  be  affected  by  the 
results  of  such  researches,  and,  if  so,  is 
not  this  modification  an  injury  ?  Or  is  it 
really  an  enrichment  of  our  religious  in- 
heritance ? 

The  points  of  possible  contact  between 
Science  and  Religion  must  be  put  still  more 
closely.  Any  one  who  takes  Religion  and 
Christianitv  in  earnest,  views   his  entire   life 


INTRODUCTION  xxi 

from  the  standpoint  of  Divine  Guidance. 
Nay,  a  Christian  goes  further.  He  positively 
asserts  :  "  God  is  my  Father  and  I  am  His 
child"  and  he  maintains  a  habitual  attitude 
of  prayerful  communion  with  his  Heavenly 
Father.  How  does  Science  look  at  this 
conviction  and  habit  ?  Does  it  compel  the 
Christian  to  limit  the  hearing  of  prayer  to 
a  purely  psychological  and  subjective  effect, 
or  does  it  allow  him,  in  the  ordinary  course 
of  Nature,  to  enjoy  an  objective  answer  to 
his  prayers? 

Finally,  the  chief  cause  of  the  breach 
between  Science  and  Christianity  must  be 
alluded  to,  viz.,  the  overstepping  of  bounds. 
Both  scientists  and  theologians  have  indulged 
in  this.  Theologians  overstep  the  limit  when 
they  think  that  they  are  in  a  position  to 
restrict  scientific  investigation  on  the  score 
of  Biblical  assertions,  as,  for  instance,  in 
prescribing  the  method  scientists  must  pursue 
and  the   results   at   which  they  must  arrive. 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

The  whole  of  the  Middle  Ages  with  its 
theological  dominion  of  the  schools  over  the 
sciences  is  a  great  organic  instance  of  such 
an  error — which,  with  its  theory  of  the 
verbal  inspiration  of  the  Holy  Scriptures, 
a  theory  utterly  exploded  at  any  rate  on 
Protestant  territory,  still  casts  its  darkening 
and  bewildering  shadows  far  over  the  modern 
mind.  Scientists  overstep  the  limits  when 
they  put  the  results  of  their  researches  at 
the  disposal  of  an  anti-Christian  view  of  the 
world,  or  when  they  think  the  axiom  of 
Causality,  according  to  which  they  prosecute 
their  inquiries,  excludes  that  category  of 
Teleology  which  nevertheless  meets  them  at 
every  turn  and  which  finds  in  the  universe 
as  a  whole  and  in  its  manifold  details  so 
magnificent  a  proof.  Once  we  refuse  to 
overstep  these  limits,  we  shall  find  that  the 
acceptance  of  a  Christian  or  an  anti-Christian 
view  of  the  world  is  certainly  not  the  result 
of  scientific  research,  but  an  act  of  personal 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

choice, — and  that  just  as  the  Christian  view 
of  the  world  satisfies  the  soul  far  better  than 
does  its  rival,  so  also  it  presents  far  fewer 
difficulties. 


CHAPTER  I 

CREATION  AS  A  WHOLE,  CONSIDERED  FROM  THE 
SCIENTIFIC  AND  THE  RELIGIOUS  POINT  OF 
VIEW 

Before  we  consider  any  special  department  of 
Nature  where  collisions  might  arise  between 
Science  and  Christianity,  we  must  put  ourselves 
in  the  position  of  the  scientist  and  try  to  see 
things  from  his  point  of  view :  to  see  how  the 
world  as  a  whole  and  in  detail  appears  to  him, 
and  how  the  Christian — or  let  us  rather  say,  at 
this  preliminary  stage  of  our  inquiry,  how  the  re- 
ligious man  regards  the  world  from  the  theistic 
standpoint. 

We  must  make  this  last  qualification,  because 
we  do  not  wish  to  deny  religious  feeling  altogether 
to  one  who  maintains  an  atheistic  or  pantheistic 
standpoint ;  but  on  the  whole  we  must  say  we  do 

not  see  any  reason  for  discussing  any  further  those 

1 


2  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

pious  feelings  for  the  mere  universe  which  in  a 
certain  sense  may  claim  to  be  a  religion. 

David  Friedrich  Strauss  in  his  book  on  The 
Old  and  the  New  Faith,  which  once  excited  so 
much  attention  and  even  to-day  is  still  the  "gospel " 
of  so  many  "  pantheists  "  (compare  Häckel,  The 
Riddle  of  the  Universe,  p.  357),  gives  a  flat  denial 
to  the  question,  "  Are  we  still  Christians  ?  "  but 
on  the  contrary  answers  the  question,  "  Have  we 
still  a  Religion  ?  "  by  saying,  "  Yes  or  No,  just  as 
you  understand  it  ".  We  will  not  flatly  contradict 
him,  but  we  must  contradict  and  refute  his  asser- 
tion as  psychologically  impossible,  when  he  says, 
on  the  same  page  :  "  We  claim  the  same  reverence 
for  our  universe  as  the  believers  of  the  old  school 
for  their  God ".  An  atheist  or  pantheist  can 
neither  possess  nor  claim  the  same  reverence  for 
an  impersonal  universe  that  the  believer,  whether 
of  the  old  or  new  school  cherishes  for  his  per- 
sonal God,  in  whom,  as  theist  or  deist,  he  sees 
the  Almighty  Creator  of  Heaven  and  Earth,  and 
in  whom,  as  a  Christian,  he  finds  his  Heavenly 
Father.1 

1  For  those  who  are  not  acquainted  with  scientific  phraseology, 
we  add  here  that  Deism  is  that  view  of  the  world  which  assumes 
that  while  God  has  created   the  world,  after  He  created   it  He 


PANTHEISM  3 

In  assigning  so  low  a  place  to  the  religion  of  an 
atheist  or  pantheist,  as  compared  with  the  religion 
of  a  Theist,  we  are  corroborated  by  the  eloquent 
witness  of  a  scientist  who  has  passed  through  every 
stage  of  the  religious  and  the  irreligious  conception 
of  the  universe  and  finally  fought  his  way  back 
again  to  a  Christian  view  of  the  world.  I  refer  to 
the  English  scientist  and  scholar,  George  John 
Romanes,  one  of  Darwin's  intimate  and  younger 
friends,  who  made  very  valuable  researches  regard- 
ing the  mental  development  of  animals  and  men. 
Through  all  the  stages  of  his  atheistic,  Theistic 
and  Christian  views,  he  never  gave  up  the  thought 

let  it  go  its  own  way  independently;  Theism  assumes  that  the 
Creator  remains  immanent,  always  alive  and  present  in  the  world 
He  has  made ;  Pantheism  is  that  system  according  to  which  God 
and  the  world  are  one ;  Atheism,  that  which  denies  the  Being  of 
God.  For  Deism,  God  is  a  transcendent,  remote  Being,  over 
against  the  world  He  has  called  into  existence ;  Theism  com- 
bines transcendence  with  immanence,  i.e.,  the  presence  of  God  in 
the  Universe ;  Pantheism,  with  its  union  of  God  and  the  world, 
knows  only  immanence.  Finally,  a  movement  was  set  on  foot 
in  England  by  Huxley  and  Herbert  Spencer  which  is  called 
Agnosticism  and  implies  that  it  is  absolultey  impossible  to  know 
the  Final  Cause  of  Existence  ;  at  any  rate  we  are  not  to  attribute 
Personality  to  God  because  such  a  thing  is  unintelligible  with- 
out the  limitation  of  a  Non-Ego — an  objection  often  echoed  in 
Germany ;  the  expression  "  the  Supra-personality  of  God "  is 
nreferable. 


4  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

of  an  origin  of  organisms  through  gradual  Evolu- 
tion. In  his  twenty-fifth  year,  he  still  occupied 
the  position  of  a  Christian  Theist  and  from  this 
standpoint  gained  the  Burney  Prize  in  the  year 
1873,  on  the  subject  of  Christian  Prayer  and 
Natural  Law.  But  whilst  engaged  in  this,  doubts 
began  to  trouble  him,  and  these  gained  so  much 
influence  over  him  that  in  1876  he  wrote  A  Candid 
Examination  of  Theism  from  a  thoroughly  sceptical 
and  in  fact  actually  atheistic  standpoint.  This 
was  published  in  1878  under  the  pseudonym  of 
"  Physicus  ".  In  it  he  made  the  following  touch- 
ing confession,  which  is  quoted  by  Bishop  Gore, 
the  editor  of  Romanes'  posthumous  work,  Thoughts 
on  Religion  (Longmans  &  Co.,  London,  1895) : 
"And  now  in  conclusion  I  feel  it  is  desirable  to 
state  that  any  antecedent  bias  with  regard  to 
Theism  which  I  individually  possess  is  unquestion- 
ably on  the  side  of  traditional  beliefs.  It  is  there- 
fore with  the  utmost  sorrow  that  I  find  myself 
compelled  to  accept  the  conclusions  here  worked 
out;  and  nothing  would  have  induced  me  to  publish 
them,  save  the  strength  of  my  conviction  that  it 
is  the  duty  of  every  member  of  society  to  give 
his  fellows  the  benefit  of  his  labours  for  whatever 


G.  J.  ROMANES  5 

they  may  be  worth.  Just  as  I  am  convinced  that 
truth  must  in  the  end  be  the  most  profitable  for 
mankind,  so  I  am  persuaded  that  every  individual 
endeavour  to  attain  it,  provided  only  that  such 
endeavour  is  unbiassed  and  sincere,  ought  with- 
out hesitation  to  be  made  the  common  property  of 
all  men,  no  matter  in  what  direction  the  results 
of  its  promulgation  may  appear  to  tend.  And  so 
far  as  the  ruination  of  individual  happiness  is 
concerned,  no  one  can  have  a  more  lively  percep- 
tion than  myself  of  the  possibly  disastrous  ten- 
dency of  my  work.  So  far  as  I  am  individually 
concerned,  the  result  of  this  analysis  has  been 
to  show  that,  whether  I  regard-  the  problem  of 
Theism  on  the  lower  plane  of  strictly  relative 
probability  or  on  the  higher  plane  of  purely  formal 
considerations,  it  equally  becomes  my  obvious 
duty  to  stifle  all  belief  of  the  kind  which  I  conceive 
to  be  the  noblest,  and  to  discipline  my  intellect 
with  regard  to  this  matter  into  an  attitude  of  the 
purest  scepticism.  And  for  as  much  as  I  am  far 
from  being  able  to  agree  with  those  who  affirm 
that  the  twilight  doctrine  of  the  '  new  faith  '  is  a 
desirable  substitute  for  the  waning  splendour  of 
1  the  old,'  I  am  not  ashamed  to  confess  that  with 


6  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

this  virtual  negation  of  God,  the  Universe  to  me 
has  lost  its  soul  of  loveliness ;  and  although  from 
henceforth  the  precept  to  '  work  while  it  is  day ' 
will  doubtless  but  gain  an  intensified  force  from 
the  terribly  intensified  meaning  of  the  words  that 
1  the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can  work,'  yet 
when  at  times  I  think,  as  think  at  times  I  must, 
of  the  appalling  contrast  between  the  hallowed 
glory  of  that  creed  which  once  was  mine,  and 
the  lonely  mystery  of  existence  as  now  I  find  it — 
at  such  times  I  shall  ever  feel  it  impossible  to 
avoid  the  sharpest  pang  of  which  my  nature  is 
susceptible." 

Now  if  we  begin  with  the  general  comparison 
indicated  in  the  title  of  the  present  chapter,  there 
are  two  principles  determined  for  us.  One  has 
been  already  hinted  at  in  the  Introduction,  viz., 
that  every  phenomenon  in  the  world  may  be  re- 
garded both  from  a  scientific  and  a  religious 
point  of  view,  and  is  in  fact  regarded  from  either 
one  or  the  other  standpoint.  The  second  prin- 
ciple consists  in  the  consideration  that  it  is  just 
in  this  general  sphere  that  the  main  conflict  has 
raged  most  acutely,  so  acutely  that  many  have 
been  led  to  believe  that  the  opposition  between  a 


ACHIEVEMENTS  OF  SCIENCE  7 

scientific  and  a  religious  or  theistic  view  of  the 
world  is  irreconcilable — in  fact  that  the  one  ex- 
cludes the  other. 

The  way  in  which  the  scientific  man  regards 
the  world    in    general  and  in   detail,   consists    in 
this,  that  what   he   perceives   he   endeavours  to 
explain  from  natural    causes   as  far  as  possible. 
Now  scientific   research   has   achieved   much  on 
this    path.     If  we   cast   our   eyes  over   a   single 
century — e.g.,  the  one  just  behind  us — with  what 
surprising  clearness  has  scientific  research  in  this 
comparatively  short  period  opened  up  vast  spheres 
of  knowledge,  of  which  mankind,  until  lately,  had 
no  idea  whatsoever !     In  the  first  place,  I  call  to 
mind  the  magnificent  vista  of  the  earth's  history 
and    inhabitants    that    has    been    opened   up    by 
Geology,   and    bringing  year  by   year   fresh    sur- 
prises ;  then,  the  glimpse  we  have  had  into  the 
structure   of   the    universe    and    of    the   unity   of 
matter  and  energy,  thanks  to  Cosmic  Physics  and 
to  the  improvement  of  our  instruments.     Finally 
I  must  mention  the  arduous  labours  in  connection 
with  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  species  and  of 
mankind,  in  which  Darwin  has  been  our  leader. 
The   further   research   presses   on,    the    more    do 


8  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

new  problems  arise  for  solution,  only  to  make 
room  in  their  turn  for  other  problems.  Nor  will 
this  advance  in  knowledge  ever  cease  while  the 
world  lasts.  It  is  the  joy  of  all  scientific  men 
to  appropriate  what  the  Science  of  to-day  has 
put  into  their  hands ;  then,  advancing  past  their 
forefathers,  to  toil  on,  hand  in  hand  with  their  con- 
temporaries, in  the  arduous  pursuit  after  further 
knowledge.  This  is  the  view  which  the  scientific 
man  takes  of  the  realm  of  creation. 

Far  otherwise  is  the  view  of  the  man  who  is 
religiously  inclined.  For  him  the  whole  universe 
is  a  revelation  of  the  Divine  Glory,  the  Work  of 
the  Living  God,  who  created,  sustains,  guides  and 
controls  the  world  and  all  that  therein  is.  Even 
those  occurrences  and  phenomena,  the  natural 
causes  of  which  he  has  learnt  to  know  through 
Science,  are  not  excluded  from  his  religious  stand- 
point by  the  knowledge  of  their  causes  and  the 
laws  of  their  action.  For  all  this  matter,  all  these 
energies,  all  these  laws  are  in  his  eyes  just  as 
truly  works  of  the  same  God  Who  created  the 
whole  universe  and  Who,  by  means  of  these 
energies  and  laws,  upholds  and  governs  all  things 
great  and  small.1 


THE  RELIGIOUS  OUTLOOK  9 

Far  from  seeing  his  faith  in  the  Creator  in- 
jured by  his  increased  knowledge  of  natural  causes 
and  of  the  laws  of  their  operation,  he  recognises 
therein  not  only  no  divergence  from  his  knowledge 
of  God,  but  on  the  other  hand  a  positive  enrich- 
ment of  that  knowledge.  Moreover,  the  religious 
man  sees  in  everything  that  nature  offers  him  by 
way  of  gifts  and  pleasure,  only  gifts  of  a  Divine 
Goodness  which  he  receives  with  thankfulness, 
while  in  all  experiences  of  pain  or  hindrance  he 
sees  a  training-school  of  Divine  Wisdom  and 
Love,  which  he  accepts  with  submission. 

If  in  this  way  of  looking  at  things  the  highly- 
cultured  and  the  less-educated,  the  learned  and 
the  ignorant,  are  at  one,  in  so  far  as  they  are 
both  religiously  disposed,  may  we  not  find  in  this  a 
proof  that  our  presentation  of  the  religious  stand- 
point is  a  sound  one  ?  For  religion  ought  to  be  a 
universal  blessing,  not  a  privilege  for  the  talented 
alone,  any  more  than  a  substitute  for  other  joys, 
of  which  the  uneducated  are  deprived. 

This  position  of  absolute  peace  between  the 
scientific  and  the  religious  aspects  of  the  world, 
which  we  hold,  is  so  stoutly  contradicted  by  some 
scientists  that    even  those  who  hold  a  religious 


10  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

view  of  the  world  are  misled  by  this  disagreement, 
lose  faith  in  any  harmony  of  both  aspects,  and 
charge    Science   with    severing    Nature    from    its 
Divine  Originator.      "Either   natural  origin    and 
natural    evolution,    or    else    Creation!     The   one 
excludes  the  other!  "      Such  is  the  cry  one  hears 
and  has  heard  not  only  in  popular  lectures  and 
debates,  but  also  in  scientific  works  for  decades 
past  and  even  in  those  of  to-day.     The  popular 
scientific   works    by    Ernst    Häckel    are   quite    a 
typical   case  in   point.     The  title  of  the   first  of 
these  works,  The  Natural  History  of  Creation,  was 
chosen  with  the   direct  object  of  presenting  this 
account  of  natural  origins  as  the  only  true  view 
in   opposition  to   the  Biblical  and  Theistic   con- 
ception.    In   the   very    first    of    the    twenty-four 
lectures  into  which  the  book  is  divided,  and  over 
and  over  again  throughout  its  pages,  Häckel  states 
his  causal  mechanical   theory  of  the  world — his 
so-called  Monism — as  the  only  authorised  theory 
in    opposition   to    the    detestable    Dualism    of    a 
teleological    and  theistic  theory.     The  bluntness 
with  which  he  dismisses  the  thought  of  a  Creator 
of  the  world  increases  in  the  two  popular  scientific 
works,  which  followed.     In   his  Anthropogeny  he 


HAECKEL  1 1 

says  (p.  88) :  "  The  antiquated  fable  of  the  wise 
scheme  whereby  the  Creator's  hand    ordered  all 
things  in  wisdom  and  understanding,  the  empty 
phrase  of  a  design  in  the  structure  of  organisms, 
is  completely  refuted".     "Either  blind  belief  in 
a  Creator  or  the  scientific  theory  of  evolution !  " 
he  cries.     Of  course,  from  this  point  of  view,  the 
feelings  of  gratitude  toward  the   Creator   as  the 
Giver    of    every   good   gift    disappear.     He    says 
again :   "  Human  vanity  and  human  pride,  since 
the  awakening  of  human  consciousness,  have  got 
into  the  way  of  regarding  Man  as  the  peculiar 
object  and  end  of  all  life  on  earth,  as  the  central 
point  of  earth's  being,  for  whose  use  and  service 
all  the   other  activities  of  nature  have   from  the 
beginning  been  determined  or  predestinated  by  a 
wise  Providence".      This    presumptuous  anthro- 
pocentric1   conceit  is  pronounced  entirely  unten- 
able.    Courtesy  towards   other  people's   ways  of 
thinking   is  certainly  not  Häckel's  strong  point. 
This  is  the  way  in  which  he  concludes  his  twenty- 
third  lecture  in  the  Natural  History  of  Creation  : — 
''Readiness   to    accept   the   theory    of   Evolution 
and    the    monistic    philosophy   founded    upon    it 

1  J.e.,  making  man  the  central  point. 


12  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

forms  the  best  criterion  of  one's  mental  develop- 
ment ".  The  pioneer  in  the  history  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  embryo,  Charles  Ernest  v. 
Baer  had  published  in  his  eighty-fourth  year 
a  number  of  treatises  which  are  of  the  greatest 
importance  for  the  criticism  of  the  teleological 
view  and  the  Darvvinistic  theory  of  selection. 
They  still  attract  much  notice  in  our  own  day, 
but  they  are  inconvenient  for  Häckel's  theory. 
In  his  Riddle  of  the  Universe  (pp.  308-10  ;  E.  Tr., 
p.  95),  he  pays  Von  Baer  the  compliment  of 
saying  that  he  is  suffering  from  old  age,  and  that, 
owing  to  a  mystical  strain  which  has  become 
more  and  more  firmly  implanted  in  him  with 
increasing  age,  he  can  no  longer  follow  the  latest 
achievements  of  science.  If  Von  Baer  had  sur- 
vived to  hear  this  reproach,  he  might  have  com- 
forted himself  with  the  thought  of  a  Newton 
whose  Christian  convictions  were  excused,  on  the 
score  of  old  age,  by  the  upholders  of  an  opposite 
view  of  the  world.  The  above-mentioned  work 
of  Häckel,  which  appeared  in  1899,  represented 
the  high-water  mark  of  polemic  against  Theism 
and  Christianity.  The  fourth  and  last  section  of 
the   work   and    the    conclusion    of  the  third   are 


HAECKEL  ]  3 

entirely  devoted  to  this  attack.  Possibly  the 
modest  confession  at  the  close,  that  as  regards 
the  innermost  essence  of  Nature,  we  are,  perhaps, 
to-day,  as  far  off  from  the  truth  and  as  ignorant 
as  were  Anaximander  and  Empedocles,  two  thou- 
sand four  hundred  years  ago,  Spinoza  and  Newton 
two  hundred  years  ago,  and  Kant  and  Goethe 
one  hundred  years  ago — possibly  this  may  seem 
conciliatory,  but  while  such  utterances  might 
have  justified  the  hope  that  both  Christianity 
and  Theism  would  be  treated  with  at  least  some 
measure  of  reverence,  this  hope  remains  unful- 
filled. The  way  in  which  the  Person  of  Jesus 
Christ  is  handled  must  give  the  deepest  pain  to 
every  Christian,  and  the  lack  of  taste  to  which 
antipathy  is  liable,  is  shown  by  the  way  in  which 
Häckel  scoffs  at  Theism,  not  only  in  the  Riddle 
of  the  Universe  but  also  in  earlier  publications.  It 
is  not  to  be  expected  that  every  reader  will  find 
out  for  himself  in  such  writings  the  point  at 
which  scientific  research  ends  and  metaphysical 
argument  begins.  The  latter  can  be  conducted 
by  two  different  men  from  quite  the  same 
scientific  discoveries,  and  yet  attain  to  quite 
opposite  results  if  both  presuppose  opposite  con- 


14  VIEWS  OF  CREATION 

ceptions  of  the  universe.  With  this  however  we 
will  deal  later.  Meanwhile  another  perfectly 
reasonable  suspicion  may  suggest  itself;  indeed 
it  will  possibly  occur  to  any  reader,  viz.,  that  this 
whole  polemic  starts  from  a  false  conception  of 
creation. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION  AS  RECORDED  IN 

THE  BIBLE 

The  two  alternatives  of  the  polemic  we  have  just 

been   noticing   are    "  Either    natural    origin    and 

natural  evolution,  or  Creation  ".     If  this  dilemma 

referred    only   to   the   universe   as   a   whole   and 

simply  meant  that,   according   to  one   view,   the 

universe   owes   its   existence,  both  in  shape  and 

substance,  to  the  Creative  Will,  Almighty  Power, 

and  Wisdom  of  God,  while  according  to  the  other 

it  came  into  being  of  itself — there  would  be  no 

objection  to  such  an  antithesis.     All  it  maintains 

is  that  these  two  views  are  irreconcilable  and  that 

each  has  its  supporters. 

But   many   of   the    controversialists,   including 

supporters  as  well  as   opponents  of  the  idea  of 

Creation,  are  of  opinion  that  Creation,  according 

to  a  Christian  and  Biblical  interpretation,  involves 

the  further  assumption  that  the  individual  inhabi- 

15 


16         THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

tants  of  that  region  of  the  universe  with  which  we 
are  best  acquainted,  because  it  is  our  own  dwelling- 
place,  namely,  the  plants,  animals,  and  people  of 
the  earth,  originally  appeared  in  all  their  different 
kinds  and  species,  being  suddenly  summoned  from 
non-existence  into  existence.  Such  a  theory,  it  is 
held,  alone  entitles  their  origin  to  be  called  crea- 
tion. We  are  to  picture  the  scene  somewhat  as 
the  archangel  Raphael  describes  the  work  of  the 
sixth  day  in  Haydn's  glorious  oratorio,  "The 
Creation  ".  "  And  God  spake,  '  Let  the  earth 
bring  forth  living  creatures  after  their  kind \ 
Immediately  the  earth  opened  its  lap  and  at 
God's  word  bore  creatures  of  every  kind  in  per- 
fect development  and  in  almost  infinite  number. 
Here  stood  the  lion  roaring  for  joy,  here  the 
nimble  tiger  crouched  ;  there  the  swift  stag  raised 
its  antlers,  and  again  the  noble  horse  with  flowing 
mane  pranced  and  curvetted  in  its  strength." 
Such  a  conception  of  the  Creation,  which  as  an 
imaginative  picture  draws  upon  the  beautiful  and 
purely  monotheistic  presentation  of  Creation  in 
the  Bible,  will  always  maintain  its  right  and 
exercise  its  fascination  in  the  sphere  of  poetry 
and    art,  but  to  recognise  in  it  an  adequate  pre- 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  17 

sentation  of  the  real  order  of  events  at  the  time 
of  their  occurrence  and  a  serviceable  foundation 
for  any  conception  of  Creation,  is  impossible  except 
for  one  who  is  absolutely  devoid  of  any  knowledge 
of  what  scientific  research  has  disclosed  and  just 
as  devoid  of  any  grasp  of  a  correct  Biblical  idea 
of  Creation  which  corresponds  to  the  spirit  as  well 
as  to  the  letter  of  the  Scriptures. 

We  shall  have  occasion  in  our  next  chapter  to 
speak  at  length  of  the  results  of  Modern  Science ; 
at  present  we  must  examine  the  question  of  the 
conception  of  Creation  as  presented  to  us  by  the 
Bible. 

The  Bible  opens  with  two  accounts  of  Creation 
immediately  following  each  other.  The  first,  which 
in  point  of  origin  is  the  later  account,  commences 
with  Genesis  i.  I,  and  continues  to  the  first  half 
of  the  fourth  verse  in  chapter  ii.  The  second  and 
much  earlier  account  is  to  be  found  from  chapter 
ii.  4  to  the  end  of  the  chapter,  running  right 
on  through  chapters  iii.  and  iv.  as  the  story  of 
the  Fall  and  the  First  Generations  of  Mankind. 

Now  whoever   is  of  opinion  that  reverence  for 

the  Scriptures  compels  him  to  understand  these 

accounts  as  literal  representations  of  what  actually 

2 


18  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

occurred  at  Creation,  and  does  not  know  anything 
of  the  light  thrown  by  Science  on  the  origin  of 
organisms,  must  of  necessity  arrive  at  a  concep- 
tion of  Creation  which  will  lead  him  into  conflict 
with  Natural  Science.  The  second  and  older  ac- 
count of  Creation  will  be  more  than  ever  likely  to 
bring  him  to  this  pass.  He  will  imagine  that 
God,  the  Almighty  Creator  of  Heaven  and  Earth, 
did  not  first  of  all  assume  the  form  of  man  in 
Paradise,  out  of  love  to  the  first  human  pair, 
walking  in  the  garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day, 
but  that  it  was  on  purpose  to  create  man  that 
He  took  upon  Him  such  a  shape,  formed  Man 
from  a  lump  of  earth,  and,  into  the  nostrils  of 
the  figure  thus  formed,  breathed  the  breath  of 
life.  He  will  imagine  that  the  animals,  apart 
from  the  higher  soul  possessed  by  Man,  were 
created  in  a  somewhat  similar  manner,  because 
it  is  said  of  them  that  God  made  them  out  of 
the  earth.  He  will  have  visions  of  how  God  took 
a  rib  from  the  sleeping  man  and  of  it  formed  a 
woman.  In  all  this  he  will  feel  himself  bound 
to  visualise  the  actual  events,  and  he  will  be 
tempted  to  consider  that  those  who  do  not  think 
as  he  does  must  be  less  religious  because  they 
are  less  subservient  to  the  text  of  Scripture. 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  19 

Unfortunately  for  such  a  standpoint  no  less  an 
authority  than  Holy  Scripture  itself  actually  for- 
bids us  to  take  the  two  accounts  of  Creation  as 
statements  of  what  really  happened.  For  the 
accounts  are  contradictory,  both  as  regards  the 
manner  in  which  the  different  creatures  were 
summoned  into  existence  by  the  Creator  and  as 
regards  the  order  of  the  various  acts  of  creation. 
The  pious  Israelite  who  found  to  his  hand  these 
ancient  records  of  the  story  of  the  earth  and 
pieced  them  together,  constructing  thereby  a  mag- 
nificent portal  for  the  Story  of  Salvation,  he  and 
the  people  who  nourished  themselves  on  both 
alike,  must  have  found  the  worth  and  harmony 
of  these  narratives  for  their  religious  sense  some- 
where else  than  in  their  two  very  different  accounts 
of  the  outward  order  of  events. 

Let  us  face  this  apparent  contradiction  ! 

The  earlier  but  in  point  of  age  the  later  account 
(Gen.  i.),  sees  Creation  in  all  its  details  completed 
by  the  creative  word  of  God  :  "  God  spake  and 
it  was  done  ".  The  Creation  is  moreover  brought 
to  a  state  of  perfection  in  six  days  of  work, 
which  seem  to  be  arranged  according  to  a  double 
principle.     One  of  these  is  that  in  the  first  half 


20  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

of  the  week  of  Creation,  i.e.  during  the  three  first 
days,  the  four  elements  of  antiquity  are  called  into 
being,  fire,  air,  earth,  and  water;  in  these  the 
separate  beings  are  to  move  that  live  in  these 
elements.  On  the  first  day,  Light :  on  the  second 
— by  the  division  of  the  upper  from  the  lower 
waters  by  means  of  the  firmament :  Water  and 
Air — on  the  third,  Dry  Land  covered  by  the  world 
of  plants.  In  the  second  half — the  fourth,  fifth 
and  sixth  days — the  separate  beings  are  created 
that  move  in  those  elements ;  on  the  fourth  day, 
the  Lights  of  Heaven  :  on  the  fifth,  the  Creatures 
of  Water  and  Air :  on  the  sixth,  the  Creatures  of 
the  Land  and — Man.  Man  indeed  is  the  Crown 
and  End  of  Creation,  the  image  of  God,  and  Man 
is  male  and  female.  The  other  principle  is  that 
of  the  gradual  preparation  of  the  earth  to  be  an 
adequate  dwelling-place  for  Man.  Next  to  these 
two  principles  comes  a  third,  recognisable  by  the 
fact  that  the  Six  Divine  Days  of  Creation  were 
succeeded  by  the  Seventh  Day  of  Rest  which  God 
blessed  and  hallowed. 

This  Divine  Week  is  an  archetype  and  type  for 
men  who  are  made  in  the  image  of  God  (Gen.  i. 
26,  27).     Man  must  also  divide  his  human  days 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  21 

into  weeks  of  seven  days,  of  which  the  first  six 
days  are  appointed  for  work,  while  the  seventh  is 
set  apart  for  rest,  and  to  this  end  is  blessed  and 
hallowed. 

In  the  second  and  older  narrative  which  begins 
with  the  second  half  of  Genesis  ii.  4,  there  is 
nothing  said  anywhere  of  a  creative  word  of  God. 
We  read  of  God  making  or  forming.  This  is  very 
clearly  described  in  the  account  of  the  creation 
of  man  and  woman,  and  in  the  story  of  the 
Creation  of  the  lower  animals  the  process  is  also 
called  a  forming.  Nor  is  there  a  trace  to  be  found 
here  of  the  division  of  Creation  into  six  days  or  of 
a  Creation  Week  of  seven  days,  any  more  than 
in  the  Creation  myths  of  those  nations  whose 
civilisation  is  connected  with  that  of  Israel.  The 
Phoenician,  e.g.,  the  Egyptian,  and  especially  the 
Babylonian  myths,  in  spite  of  several  resemblances 
to  both  the  first  and  second  Biblical  accounts, 
nowhere  show  any  division  of  the  different  stages 
of  creations  into  days  of  work.  The  only  resem- 
blance to  the  Biblical  Week  of  Creation  that  one 
can  possibly  find,  i.e.  in  the  ancient  Babylonian 
records,  consists  in  the  fact  that  the  Babylonian 
account  of  Creation  was  written  on  seven  tablets. 


22  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

This  suggestion  I  owe  to  Professor  Gunkel.  One 
might  more  feasibly  speak  of  a  single  creative  Day, 
in  connection  with  the  second  account.  It  begins 
in  Genesis  ii.  4  with  the  words,  "in  the  Day 
when  the  Lord  made  the  heavens  and  the  earth  ". 
The  Hebrew  particle  of  time  here  is  literally 
translated,  but  we  are  ready  to  believe  that  this 
particle  had  come  to  mean  a  period  of  time, 
instead  of  implying  that  Creation  took  place  in  a 
single  Day.  Still  the  use  of  the  singular  shows 
at  least  that  the  account  contained  in  Genesis 
i.  1  was  not  yet  known  to  the  author  or  else  he 
would  have  used  the  plural  particle  and  said  as 
follows:  "On  the  days,"  etc.  The  earth  at  the 
beginning  of  the  narrative  is  already  there ;  it 
has  not  yet  rained  and  there  is  therefore  as  yet 
no  vegetable  world  but  only  a  surface  of  the 
earth  watered  by  a  "  mist ".  (Gunkel  in  his  Com- 
mentary on  Genesis  translates  this  difficult  word 
by  "stream".)  But  Man  is  not  now  as  in  the  first 
account  the  end  and  aim  of  Creation  ;  he  is  its 
beginning.  In  the  first  place,  the  Lord  God  forms 
Man  out  of  the  dust  of  the  ground  (so  Kautzsch 
translates ;  Gunkel,  "  from  the  dust  of  the  earth," 
"aus  Staub  aus  dem  Acker";  Luther,  "from    a 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  23 

lump  of  earth,"  "aus  einem  Erdenkloss ")  and 
breathes  into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life  (Gen. 
ii.  7).  God  proceeds  to  plant  a  garden  in  Eden 
far  to  the  East,  where  He  places  Man  (verse  8). 
He  then  makes  all  kinds  of  fruit  trees  grow  up  out 
of  the  ground,  while  in  the  middle  of  the  garden 
are  the  Tree  of  Life  and  the  Tree  of  the  Know- 
ledge of  Good  and  Evil  (verse  9).  In  verses  10-14 
the  rivers  of  Eden  are  described,  and  in  verse  15 
the  reason  for  which  God  put  Man  in  the  garden, 
namely,  "  to  dress  it  and  keep  it ".  In  verses  16 
and  17,  God  gives  Man  permission  to  eat  of  all 
the  trees  of  the  garden  as  he  pleases,  but  forbids 
him  to  eat  of  the  Tree  of  the  Knowledge  of  Good 
and  Evil.  According  to  verse  18,  God  decides  to 
create  a  suitable  helpmeet  for  him.  He  forms 
out  of  the  earth  the  animals  and  birds,  bringing 
them  to  Man  that  he  may  name  them  (verse  19). 
Man  does  this,  but  he  does  not  find  in  the  animals 
the  helpmeet  suitable  for  him.  Then  the  Lord 
God  makes  a  deep  sleep  fall  upon  him,  takes 
a  rib  from  his  side,  forms  it  into  a  Woman  and 
brings  her  to  Adam,  and  in  Woman  Man  at  last 
finds  his  suitable  helpmeet  (verses  21-24). 

If  we  wish   to  be  convinced   of  this  difference 


24  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

between  the  two  accounts,  we  must  certainly  not 
employ  the  translations  of  the  Scriptures  that 
have  been  introduced  into  the  Churches,  neither 
Luther's,  nor  that  of  Allioli,  nor  the  Vulgate. 
These  were  all  made  on  the  silent  assumption, 
which  was  perfectly  natural  at  the  time  when 
the  translators  lived,  but  is  indubitably  false, 
that  there  were  not  two  accounts  but  a  single, 
continuous,  coherent  record  of  Creation  in  which 
there  could  be  no  contradiction.  In  the  interests 
of  harmony,  some  violence  was  therefore  done 
to  the  original  text  at  the  critical  passages  that 
betray  the  contradiction  most  clearly.  Thus  in 
the  original  text  of  Genesis  ii.  18,  the  word  trans- 
lated by  Luther  and  Allioli  "  Gehilfin,"  is  a  word 
of  common  gender,  "a  helpmeet";  in  the  Greek 
translation  of  the  Septuagint  it  is  "  boethos,"  also 
of  common  gender,  and  in  the  Vulgate  "adju- 
torium ".  In  the  two  German  translations,  we 
find  the  word  "Gehilfin"  (helpmeet)  as  if  here 
only  the  woman  were  meant,  while  according  to 
the  context  the  animal  world  was  recognised  first 
as  his  helpmeet,  and  then,  when  this  proved  un- 
suitable, Woman  was  made,  to  be  recognised  by 
Man  as   his   perfect  helpmeet.     In  the  following 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  25 

verse  (verse  19)  we  read,  "And  out  of  the  ground 
the  Lord  God  formed  every  beast  of  the  field  and 
every  fowl  of  the  air,"  etc.  The  Vulgate  has  an 
ambiguous  expression,  "  Formatis  igitur  Dominus 
Deus  de  humo  cunctis  animantibus  terrae  .  .  . 
adduxit  ea  ad  Adam".  Allioli  here  gives  the 
correct  sense,  translating  "  also  bildete  Gott  der 
Herr"  "So  the  Lord  God  formed.  .  .  ."  But 
Luther  in  his  translation  shows  quite  clearly 
his  harmonistic  standpoint,  which  makes  him  in 
Genesis  ii.  keep  to  the  order  of  Creation  as  it  is 
related  in  the  first  chapter,  and  place  Man  as 
the  last  of  God's  creatures  ;  hence  he  translates 
the  words  of  the  original,  contrary  to  the  meaning 
of  the  original  text :  "  For  when  the  Lord  God 
had  made  every  beast  of  the  field,"  "  Denn  als 
Gott  der  Herr  gemacht  hatte  allerlei  Tiere  auf 
dem  Felde". 

Any  one  who  wishes  to  learn  the  actual  wording 
of  the  narratives  must  read  them  either  in  the 
original  Hebrew,  or  in  the  Greek  translation,  the 
so-called  Septuagint,  which  had  its  origin  before 
the  completion  of  the  Old  Testament  Canon,  and 
which  translates  the  two  narratives  exactly  as  they 
stand  in  the  original  and  vivid  Hebrew  ;  despite 


26  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

the  differences  in  the  accounts,  the  Septuagint 
puts  them  quite  naively  side  by  side,  so  that  the 
difference  between  the  two  becomes  absolutely 
clear.  If  any  one  has  any  difficulty  in  getting 
at  these  two  sources  he  should  read  the  two 
accounts  in  the  translation  of  the  Old  Testament 
by  Kautzsch  (published  by  J.  C.  B.  Mohr)  where 
the  contradiction  of  the  two  will  at  once  become 
apparent. 

The  whole  of  the  difficulty  above  described  exists 
for  German,  not  for  English  readers.  The  English 
reader  has  only  in  Genesis  ii.  4,  after  the  words 
''when  they  were  created,"  to  put  a  full  stop 
instead  of  the  comma.  He  will  then  find  in  the 
words  "  In  the  day  that  the  Lord  God  made,"  etc., 
the  beginning  of  the  second  and  more  ancient 
account  of  Creation.  This  agrees  quite  literally 
with  the  original  text.  Besides,  in  verses  18  and 
20  the  English  version  has  the  only  correct  word, 
"  an  help ".  In  verse  19,  also  the  construction 
entirely  agrees  with  the  original,  "  And  out  of  the 
ground  the  Lord  God  formed  every  beast  of  the 
field  "  etc.  This  clearly  shows  the  contradiction 
between  the  two  accounts. 

He  who   in    the  face   of  this   contradiction   is 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  27 

convinced  of  the  impossibility  of  regarding  the 
two  accounts  as  revelations  of  the  real  course  of 
events,  but  who  is  still  inclined  to  look  for  such  a 
revelation  in  Holy  Scripture,  may  perhaps  attempt 
to  sacrifice  the  second  of  the  accounts,  finding 
this  revelation  in  the  first  narrative,  that  of 
Genesis  i. 

Several  considerations  seem  to  favour  this  at- 
tempt. The  second,  for  all  the  absolutely  incom- 
parable beauty  and  naivete  of  its  portraiture,  shows 
such  a  decided  tendency  to  introduce  God  in  the 
form  of  Man,  such  a  decidedly  mythical  strain 
("mythical,"  that  is,  in  that  deep  sense  according 
to  which  the  noblest  ideas  are  veiled  in  the  form 
of  pictorial  representation  and  spontaneous  poetry), 
that  it  must  seem  to  the  reader  but  a  profanation 
of  its  beauty  to  drag  this  story  down  to  the  region 
of  historical  fact.  What  lends  permanent  value, 
even  of  a  religious  character,  to  this  story  is 
the  exceptionally  beautiful  representation  of  the 
relation  between  Man  and  Woman,  and,  in  the 
story  of  the  Fall,  which  immediately  follows,  the 
exceedingly  deep  and  true  psychology,  the  ethical 
force,  and  the  ethical  purity  of  the  description  of 
Sin's   origin,    essence,    and    consequences.      This 


28  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

beauty  illumines  us  with  unclouded  light  so  long 
as  we  read  the  story  as  myth  or  parable ;  it  is 
not  only  dimmed  but  absolutely  destroyed  so  soon 
as  we  imagine  we  must  take  it  as  a  record  of 
the  actual  occurrences.  Such  an  idea  must  be 
scouted  on  all  hands. 

Very  different  is  the  first  of  the  two  accounts.    In 
contrast  to  the  second  it  is  throughout  a  piece  of  re- 
flection, although  even  it  contains  traces  of  mythical 
elements,  such  as  are  to  be  found  in  the  description 
of   Chaos.      Its   purpose,    as   Wellhausen    in    his 
Prolegomena  to   the  History  of  Israel  (p.  313)  has 
already  put  it,  is  to   describe   the  real  course    of 
events  at  the  Creation,  and  this  is  done  worthily 
— judged  by  our  higher  conceptions  of  God — and 
even  in  harmony  with  a  more  correct  view  of  the 
occurrences  than  our  ancestors  possessed.     When 
we  read  "  God  spake  and  it  was  done,"  we  must 
not   think    that    the    narrator   himself  identified 
Divine  with  human  speech ;  he  simply  wanted  to 
express  Omnipotence,  just  as  at  the  present  day 
we  are  unable  to  express  the  Creative  Omnipotence 
of  God  more  vividly  than  by  saying  in  the  words 
of  Psalm  xxxviii.  9,  "  He  spake  and  it  was  done: 
He  commanded  and  it  stood  fast  ".      It  is  poss- 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  29 

ible,  in  the  recital  of  all  these  creative  acts,  that 
what  really  happened  has  been  depicted  in  a  more 
childlike  and  somewhat  different  manner  from  that 
which  Natural  Science  has  discovered  or  will  yet 
discover  for  us ;  but,  in  all  these  expressions, 
the  relative  independence  of  natural  causes  is 
constantly  recognised,  and  room  is  left  for  a  more 
mature  knowledge  of  the  natural  processes  in 
question. 

But  it  is  especially  the  knowledge  of  the  unity 
and  the  Creative  Omnipotence  of  God  that  meets 
us  in  the  first  chapter — a  chapter  which  is  so 
noble  and  magnificent  that  it  far  surpasses  all 
those  myths  of  Creation  outside  the  Bible,  to 
which  indeed  this  account  bears  some  resemblance; 
it  endows  the  Biblical  record  with  permanent 
educative  value  not  with  a  mere  historical  interest. 

We  are  bound,  therefore,  to  consider  every  at- 
tempt to  find  an  objectively  accurate  description 
of  the  course  of  events  in  the  account  given  in 
Genesis  i.,  as  a  complete  misinterpretation  and 
misconstruction  of  the  Bible's  real  value  for  man- 
kind. The  Bible  is  no  handbook  of  Science  ;  it 
does  not  pretend  to  be  such.  What  reason  is  there 
that  we  should   expect  from   God  a  supernatural 


30  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

account  of  events  in  the  universe  of  which  no  man 
could  be  eye-witness,  of  events  too  which  do  not 
bear  in  any  way  upon  the  knowledge  of  salvation, 
events  and  processes  whose  investigation  He  has 
left   to    Man's    natural   powers?      Whether   God 
made  our  world  in  a  space  of  time  that  must  be 
reckoned  by  millions  of  years,  or  in  a  few  days, 
whether  or  no  the  plants  were  called  into  existence 
before  the  sun,  moon,  stars,  and  animals,  as  that 
record  says  they  were — all  this  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  redemption  that  Christ  has  brought  us. 
Whereas  the  assertion  that  God  has  left  us  free 
to   investigate  occurrences  in    the    universe   that 
took  place  previous  to  mankind  or  lay  outside  his 
domain,  is  confirmed  both  by  the  results  of  Science 
and  by  the  idea  of  the  world  on  which  the  Old 
Testament  accounts  are  founded.     Magnificent  dis- 
coveries  in   the    sphere   of  natural    history   have 
been  achieved  already  by  Science,  and  have  im- 
measurably extended    our  ideas  of  the  contents, 
history,  and  scope  of  the  universe,  while  the  con- 
ception that  the  Biblical  account  offers  us  is  not 
in  any  way  in  advance  of  the  views  that  the  ancient 
peoples  entertained.     Even  in  the  Bible  the  earth 
is  the  central  point  of  the  universe,  and  the  firma- 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  31 

ment,  as  the  name  in  all  the  languages  of  antiquity 
shows,  is  a  solid  arch  above  which  lie  the  upper 
waters  that  come  down  in  the  form  of  rain.  Sun, 
moon,  and  stars  are  not  celestial  bodies  but  lights 
which  move  on  the  firmament  and  regulate  time 
on  earth.  Every  attempt  to  bring  the  series  of 
the  Days  of  Creation  into  exact  accord  with  the 
results  of  geology  must  entirely  break  down.  The 
plants  were  not  called  into  existence  before  the 
heavenly  bodies  and  were  not  perfect  after  their 
kind  when  the  animal  world  appeared;  on  the 
contrary,  the  world  of  organisms  presupposes  the 
existence  of  the  earth  as  a  body  revolving  on  its 
own  axis  round  the  sun,  whilst  plants  and  animals 
appeared  alike  in  the  so-called  protist  kingdom,1 
ascended  side  by  side  through  very  slow  stages 
of  evolution  and  processes  of  differentiation,  and 
so  reached  their  present  state. 

In  only  one  fact  do  the  Bible  and  Science  agree, 
namely,  that  Man  is  the  last  and  at  the  same  time 

1  This  is  the  name  given  to  the  lowest  single-celled  organisms 
which  as  yet  do  not  bear  the  specific  qualities  by  which  plants  and 
animals  differ,  and  which  yet  are  living  things.  The  graceful  and 
extremely  diversified  diatoms,  for  example,  belong  to  this  kingdom. 
The  name  "protist"  is  formed  from  the  Greek  word  "  prötos " 
(first). 


32  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

the  highest  creature  known  to  us,  when  we  sur- 
vey the  organic  kingdom  as  a  great  whole. 
Whether  certain  individual  and  subordinate  kinds 
of  plants  or  animals  have  come  into  existence 
since  the  appearance  of  Man  is  an  open  question  ; 
it  is  as  difficult  a  problem  as  that  of  "species" 
which  was  once  looked  upon  as  settled,  but  which 
the  prevailing  theories  of  evolution  have  now 
broken  up. 

A  further  appeal  is  made  against  the  endeavour 
to  find  in  Gen.  i.  a  Divinely  revealed  presentation 
of  the  real  course  of  events  at  the  Creation,  viz., 
on  the  ground  that  according  to  this  account  the 
world  from  its  commencement  to  the  appearance 
of  Man  was  called  into  being  in  six  days  of  twenty- 
four  hours  in  length  /  With  this  objection  I  cannot 
agree,  on  exegetical  grounds.  To  my  mind,  the 
exegesis  that  sees  in  the  Six  Days  of  Creation 
and  in  the  Seventh  Day  of  Rest  only  human  days, 
is  entirely  erroneous,  although  this  is  held  in  the 
excellent  new  commentaries  on  Genesis  by  Pro- 
fessors Gunkel  and  Holzinger.  These  days  are, 
indeed,  according  to  the  mind  of  the  narrator, 
days  and  nothing  more ;  yet  they  are  not  human 
days  but  Divine  Days  which  are   as   superior  to 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  33 

the  days  of  Man  who  is  made   in  the  image  of 

God,  as  the  original  is  greater  than  its  pattern. 

Two  reasons  are  to  be  found  in  the  text  of  the 

narrative  which  incline  me  to  this  view.     To  begin 

with,   these    Days  of  Creation    according  to  the 

clear  meaning  of  the  original  had  no  night.     The 

record  describes  the  end  of  a  Day  of  Creation  each 

time   in  a   somewhat    similar  recurring   formula, 

which  in  a  literal  translation  runs  much  as  follows  : 

"  And  it  was  Evening  and  it  was  Morning,  First 

Day,  Second  Day,  Third  Day,  Fourth  Day,  Fifth 

Day,  the  Sixth  Day  ".     With  Man's  days,  evening 

follows  the  work  of  day,  night  follows  evening, 

and  morning  night ;    in  the  case  of  God's  Days  of 

Creation,  Night  is  left  out  altogether,  though,  if 

the  Divine   Days  had  had  a  night,  the  narrator 

would  have  had  ample  occasion  to  have  mentioned 

it.      For   he   tells   us  just   beforehand  that   God 

divided  the  Light  from  the  Darkness,  and  called 

the    Light    Day   and    the    Darkness    Night.      It 

almost  seems  to  me  as  if  the   fear   of  changing 

the   Divine    Days  into   periods,   in  the   attempts 

made  by  Professor  Franz  Delitzsch  and  others  to 

form  what  is  really  a  false  harmony  between  the 

Bible  and  Science,  had  so  clouded  their  eyes  that 

3 


34  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

they  preferred  the  most  forced  explanation  of  the 
words  to  their  clear  and  obvious  meaning.  If  the 
generally  accepted  view  to-day  is  firmly  estab- 
lished, viz.,  that  the  account  in  Genesis  belongs 
to  the  book  of  the  priests  which  was  compiled  in 
the  fifth  century  b.c.,  then  the  story  must  have 
come  into  existence  at  a  time  when  all  the  writ- 
ings of  the  prophets  had  become  common  property 
in  Israel,  and  when  such  a  knowledge  of  God  was 
paramount  as  has  found  its  classical  expression  in 
Psalm  cxxxix.  12 :  "  Yea,  darkness  hideth  not 
from  Thee ;  but  the  night  shineth  as  the  day :  the 
darkness  and  the  light  are  both  alike  to  Thee  ". 
Such  a  conception  of  the  Deity  takes  for  granted 
that  even  if  the  Days  of  God  were  regarded  by  the 
author  as  ordinary  days,  yet  as  being  Divine  they 
could  have  no  night. 

Another  proof  that  in  the  mind  of  the  narrator 
the  Days  of  Creation  were  regarded  as  Divine 
Days,  different  from  and  higher  than  the  days  of 
Man,  lies  in  the  circumstance  that  in  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  Seventh  Day  as  the  Divine  Day  of  Rest, 
the  closing  words:  "And  the  Evening  and  the 
Morning  were  the  Seventh  Day "  are  wanting. 
Nothing  is  more  natural  than  to  suppose  that  no 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  35 

end  was  recorded  for  the  Seventh  Day  of  this 
Divine  Week  of  Creation  because  according  to 
the  idea  of  the  author  it  had  none ;  it  is  still 
going  on. 

This  is  the  simplest  and  most  obvious  exegesis, 
in  my  judgment  at  any  rate,  of  the  passage.  Ac- 
cording to  John  v.,  the  Jews  had  reproached  Jesus 
with  having  broken  the  Sabbath,  because  on  the 
Sabbath  Day  He  had  healed  a  man  who  had  been 
ill  for  thirty-eight  years,  and  in  verse  17  Jesus 
tells  these  Jews,  who  on  account  of  this  "  breach 
of  the  Sabbath  "  actually  sought  to  kill  Him, 
"  My  Father  worketh  hitherto  and  I  work  ".  This 
reply  is  only  explicable  if  Jesus  intended  and  was 
understood  by  His  hearers  to  mean,  "  My  Father 
worketh  hitherto,  although  He  has  entered  into 
His  Sabbath  Rest :  so  I  also  do  the  works  of  My 
Father  on  the  Sabbath  as  well  as  on  week-days  ". 
So  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  in  quoting  the  95th 
Psalm  refers  expressly  to  Genesis  ii.  1-3,  and  from 
this  passage  affirms  that  the  Sabbath  Rest  of  God 
is  still  in  continuance  (iv.  9),  and  is  reserved  for 
His  People. 

I  dealt  with  this  interpretation  at  more  detail 
in  the  year  1887,  in  a  special  treatise  on  the  Days 


36  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

of  Genesis,  in  the  Year-book  of  Protestant  Theology, 
thirteenth  issue,  vol.  iv.  (pp.  688-714).  I  have 
nothing  to  add  now  except  that  I  have  been  sub- 
sequently convinced  that  the  myths  of  Creation 
among  other  nations  contain  no  trace  of  a  division 
of  the  works  of  Creation  into  works  of  an  ordinary 
day,  and  that  the  thought  of  a  Divine  Week  of 
Creation  with  seven  ordinary  days  seems  to  be 
entirely  a  product  of  the  Israelitish  mind.  This 
idea  may  indeed  have  arisen  long  before  the  so- 
called  Book  of  the  Priests  or  even  before  the 
second  account  of  Creation  which  underlies  the 
Decalogue  in  Exodus  xx.  1-17,  where  the  com- 
mandment for  the  Sabbath  contained  in  verse  11 
is  expressly  referred  to  the  example  of  the  Divine 
Week  of  Creation.  We  have  no  textual  reasons 
for  seeing  a  later  insertion  in  this  verse. 

Of  course  the  author  of  that  ancient  form  of  the 
Decalogue  which  belonged  to  the  period  of  myth- 
making,  may  have  identified  the  Divine  Days  with 
earthly  days,  just  as  the  author  of  the  second 
account  of  Creation  makes  the  Creator  walk  in 
the  Garden  in  the  cool  of  the  day.  But  the  author 
of  the  first  and  later  story  of  Creation  would  have 
exalted  that  idea,  clothed  as  it  was  in  the  guise 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  37 

of  myths,  to  a  higher  and  purer  level,  seeing  that 
the  prophets  had  been  for  centuries  accustomed  to 
speak  of  a  Day  of  the  Lord  as  a  Day  of  Salvation 
and  of  Judgment  without  meaning  to  identify  it 
with  an  earthly  day. 

We  Christians  can  calmly  recognise  this  de- 
velopment in  the  knowledge  of  God  without  feeling 
ourselves  bound  to  draw  therefrom  the  conclusion 
that  this  idea  of  a  great  Divine  Week  of  Creation, 
extending  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the 
world,  answers  to  the  objective  reality.  Magnificent 
and  thoughtful  and  vivid  as  this  idea  is,  that  a 
division  of  our  earthly  days  into  weeks  with  six 
week  days  and  one  day  of  rest  was  originally  laid 
down  as  a  foundation  of  all  our  natural  life,  yet 
we  must  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  knowledge  of 
the  duration  of  time  and  of  the  order  of  events  by 
means  of  which  the  present  state  of  the  world  was 
brought  about,  has  been  handed  over  by  God  to 
scientific  research.  He  has  not  reserved  it  for  an 
alleged  revelation,  which  should  be  in  flat  contra- 
diction to  the  manifest  results  of  that  research. 

Let  us  now  return  to  the  aim  we  set  before  us 
in  this  chapter,  namely  to  prove  that  the  Biblical 
Idea  of  Creation  certainly  does  assume  that  the 


38  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

theory  of  the  Divine  Creation  and  origin  of  the 
different  objects  in  the  world  involves  a  belief  that 
these  were  called  into  being  without  the  interven- 
tion of  natural  causes. 

The  closer  study  of  the  two  accounts  has  brought 
us  to  the  negative  proof  that  these  in  no  way  bind 
us  to  any  definite  conception  of  the  manner  in 
which    God    created   the    contents   of  the  world. 
For  in  their  conception  of  the  mode  of  Creation, 
both  accounts  are  so  different  that  they  are  in  this 
aspect  quite   irreconcilable.      Whoever  is  of  the 
opinion,  an  opinion  which  I  myself  do  not  hold, 
that  in  at  least  one  of  the  two  accounts  he  must 
discover  a  revelation  of  the  real  order  of  events  at 
the  Creation,  can  only  have  recourse  to  the  first 
and  later  of  the  two  accounts ;  and  this  is  the  very 
one  which  clearly  presupposes  the  co-operation  of 
natural   causes   in   the  Creation  of  the   separate 
phenomena  of  the  universe. 

Now  if  we  turn  our  eyes  right  away  from  the 
two  accounts,  and  look  for  a  moment  at  the  other 
modes  of  expression  and  aspects  that  the  Bible 
presents  in  describing  the  Creation,  we  shall  come 
upon  numerous  examples  which  positively  prove 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  39 

that  by  all  the  writers  of  Scripture  who  speak  of 
this  creative  activity,  God  is  not  only  named  the 
Creator  of  all  that  was  created  up  to  and  includ- 
ing Man,  but  also  the  Creator  of  everything  that 
comes  into  existence  to-day  or  that  will  come  into 
existence  in  the  future,  despite  the  fact  that  there 
are  also  natural  causes  to  account  for  the  exist- 
ence of  these  later  "Creations  of  God". 

The  individual  Hebrew  names  God  when  he 
uses  religious  language ;  He  calls  on  Him  not 
simply  as  the  Creator  of  Adam  and  Eve,  but 
cries:  "Thou  art  my  Creator".  The  people  of 
Israel  are  His  Creation,  the  peoples  yet  unborn 
are  created  by  Him  :  yea,  everything  is  created  by 
Him.  To  speak  in  the  language  of  theology,  the 
ideas  of  the  Creation  and  the  Preservation  of  the 
world  become  one  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
Biblical  writers.  This  is  Luther's  interpretation. 
In  his  Exegetica  opera  latina  (Frankfurt,  Erlang, 
fifth  edition,  p.  230)  he  observes :  "  With  God, 
Creating  and  Preservation  are  one  and  the  same 
(cp.  Köstlin,  Luther's  Theology,  second  edition,  ii., 
p.  98). 

A  few  examples  may  suffice,  though  they  could 


40  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

be  multiplied  a  hundredfold.  I  quote  them  in  the 
order  of  the  books  from  which  they  are  taken.  In 
Job  xxxii.  22,  xxxv.  10,  xxxvi.  3,  Elihu  says  to 
God,  "Thou  art  my  Creator".  In  Psalm  cii.  ig, 
"  The  people  that  shall  be. born"  (i.e.,  "  shallbe 
created  ")  "  shall  praise  the  Lord  ".  In  Psalm  civ. 
30,  "  Thou  sendest  forth  Thy  Breath,  they  are 
created".  "Remember  now  Thy  Creator  in  the 
days  of  thy  youth"  (Eccl.  xii.  1).  "At  that  day 
shall  a  man  look  to  His  Maker  "  (Is.  xvii.  7).  "  The 
Lord  hath  created  a  new  thing  in  the  earth  "  (Jer. 
xxxi.  22).  "  For  Israel  hath  forgotten  His  Maker  " 
(Hos.  viii.  14).  There  is  even  a  passage  in  the 
Psalms  in  which  the  unalterable  reign  of  law  over 
everything  that  happens  in  the  universe,  which 
is  precisely  what  the  opponents  of  the  Biblical 
Idea  of  Creation  exploit,  is  described  as  so 
willed  and  created  by  God  (cp.  Ps.  cxlviii.  5,  6). 
"These"  (that  is  the  "heaven  of  heavens"  and 
the  waters  above  the  heavens)  "  shall  praise  the 
name  of  the  Lord,"  for  He  commanded  and  they 
were  created.  "  He  holds  them  for  ever  and 
ever;  He  ordains  them  so  that  they  cannot  go 
in  another  direction  ".     Professor  Kautzsch  trans- 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  41 

lates  the  sixth  verse  still  more  literally,  and 
makes  the  sense  thereby  much  clearer  :  "  He  hath 
also  stablished  them  for  ever  and  ever :  He  hath 
made  a  decree  which  they  shall  not  pass  ".  Can  the 
immutability  of  the  laws  of  Nature  be  more  clearly 
expressed  than  it  is  here  ?  Is  not  this  an  answer 
to  the  assertion  that  this  immutability  clashes 
both  with  the  Scriptural  view  of  Creation  and 
with  the  idea  of  miracles  ?  Such  passages  as  this 
help  to  bring  us  nearer  to  the  belief  that  the 
theory  of  an  eternal  duration  of  the  world  and 
its  control  by  law  is  by  no  means  excluded  from 
the  standpoint  of  Scripture,  and  that  this  does 
not  exclude  but  rather  includes  a  subsequent 
change  and  glorification  of  the  world.  "  Of  old 
hast  Thou  laid  the  foundation  of  the  earth ;  and 
the  heavens  are  the  work  of  Thy  Hands.  They 
shall  perish,  but  Thou  shalt  endure ;  yea,  all  of 
them  shall  wax  old  like  a  garment :  as  a  vesture 
shalt  thou  change  them,  and  they  shall  be  changed. 
But  Thou  art  the  same  and  Thy  years  shall  have 
no  end  "  (Ps.  cii.  25-27). 

We   think  that   we   have   hereby   proved   that 
Scripture  in   no  way  starts  from  the  hypothesis 


42  THE  CONCEPTION  OF  CREATION 

that  the  conception  of  the  various  contents  of  the 
universe  as  created  by  a  Divine  act  excludes  the 
working  of  natural  causes ;  and  that,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  natural  causes  by  which  creatures  are 
called  into  existence  are  recognised  as  such  by 
the  religious  consciousness  of  the  biblical  writers, 
but  are  traced  back  by  them  to  God's  Will  and 
Almighty  Power.  The  opponents  of  the  Biblical 
Idea  of  Creation  only  show,  by  the  charges  they 
bring  against  us,  that  they  are  ignorant  of  the 
spirit  and  language  of  the  Bible — a  condition 
which  they  certainly  share  with  those  defenders 
of  the  Biblical  Idea  who  assert  that  the  creation 
of  the  different  objects  in  the  world  excludes  the 
working  of  natural  causes.  We  again  have  the 
unalloyed  joy  on  the  one  hand  of  following  Science 
and  on  the  other  of  seeing  in  all  the  discoveries 
of  Science  an  advance  in  our  knowledge  of  the 
manner  in  which  God  created  and  sustains  the 
world.  Every  fresh  step  in  this  advance  will  be  a 
deepening  of  our  knowledge  of  God,  and  we  shall 
find  that  with  the  progress  of  our  scientific  know- 
ledge our  faith  remains  not  only  uninjured  but 
essentially  enriched  and  invigorated.     Indeed  this 


AS  RECORDED  IN  THE  BIBLE  43 

Faith  can  harmonise  with  that  religious  view  of 
Nature  which  meets  us  in  the  Bible  and  finds 
beautiful  expression  in  the  words  of  Psalm  civ., 
24 :  "  O  Lord,  how  manifold  are  Thy  works,  in 
wisdom  hast  Thou  made  them  all ;  the  earth  is 
full  of  Thy  Goodness  ".  The  words  of  Jesus  in 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  (Matt.  vi.  26-30), 
speaking  of  the  birds  of  the  air  and  the  lilies  of 
the  field,  are  the  New  Testament  confirmation  of 
this  Old  Testament  view  of  Nature,  while  at  the 
same  time  they  give  a  practical  turn  to  the  ex- 
hortation to  trust  in  God.  Finally,  the  last  book 
of  the  Bible,  the  Revelation  of  John,  is  a  fit 
counterpart  to  the  first  chapter  of  the  Bible.  In 
chapter  iv.  n,  the  representatives  of  redeemed 
mankind  in  heaven  break  forth  into  the  song, 
"Thou  art  worthy,  O  Lord,  to  receive  glory  and 
honour  and  power:  for  Thou  hast  created  all 
things,  and  for  Thy  pleasure  they  are  and  were 
created  ".  And  in  chapter  v.  13  the  writer  hears 
"  every  creature  which  is  in  Heaven  and  on  the 
earth  and  under  the  earth  and  such  as  are  in  the 
sea  and  all  that  are  in  them,"  saying,  "  Blessing 
and  honour  and  glory  and  power  be  unto   Him 


44         THE  CONCEPTION  IN  THE  BIBLE 

that  sitteth  upon  the  throne  and  unto  the  Lamb 
for  ever  and  ever  ". 

We  will  now  endeavour  to  follow  Science  in 
her  course,  noting  the  echoes  that  she  awakens  in 
our  religious  consciousness. 


CHAPTER  III 

RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC  RECORD  OF  CREA- 
TION 

I.  The  Right  of  Hypothesis  in  Natural 
Science 

We  shall  spare  ourselves  many  subsequent  re- 
petitions if,  at  the  very  outset  of  our  glance 
at  the  work  of  Science,  we  discuss  its  right  of 
hypothesis,  that  is,  its  right  of  advancing  theories 
upon  hitherto  undiscovered  causes  of  certain 
phenomena,  without  these  theories  having  been 
beforehand  proved  to  be  correct. 

Science  is  often  reproached  with  working  far 
too  much  on  mere  hypotheses,  and  many  people 
are  of  opinion  that  they  can  with  this  reproach 
speedily  dispose  of  the  frequently  surprising  results 
of  scientific  research  or  at  least  invalidate  these 
results.  This  reproach  is  justified  only  in  so  far  as 
it  warns  Science  not  to  treat  unproved  hypotheses 

as  if  they  were  already  proved,  and  not  to  posit 

45 


46  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

them  as  actual  laws  or  facts  before  it  is  really 
known  whether  they  are  laws  of  immutable  validity 
or  indeed  facts  at  all.  But  the  reproach  is  un- 
justifiable when  it  is  kitended  to  forbid  Science 
advancing  hypotheses  and  working  with  them  as 
a  basis. 

Hypotheses  are  absolutely  indispensable  for  re- 
search in  every  branch  of  Science,  and  especially 
in  Natural  Science  which  more  than  any  other 
perhaps  is  surrounded  by  unsolved  problems.  In 
the  most  extensive  region  of  scientific  research, 
the  region  of  cosmic  physics,  there  are  some  hypo- 
theses of  which  the  man  of  science  is  conscious 
that  while  they  have  been  no  more  than  mere 
hypotheses  they  have  proved  quite  indispensable 
for  his  discoveries. 

Such  hypotheses  are  the  existence  of  ether,  of 
the  atom,  of  the  molecule. 

No  one  can  perceive  these  substances  in  any 
empirical  way  (that  is  "  by  experience  "),  and  yet, 
without  taking  these  for  granted,  the  most  import- 
ant work  and  noblest  triumphs  of  Science  would 
be  impossible. 

Beyond  a  doubt  the  most  important  discoveries 
and  advances  in  our  knowledge  would  never  have 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  47 

been  made  at  all  if  the  pioneers  in  knowledge 
had  not  at  first  worked  with  hypotheses. 

This  might  be  proved  at  every  step  of  progress 
in  our  knowledge  of  Nature,  but  it  is  enough 
to  indicate  the  evidence  of  some  examples  which 
are  evident  even  to  amateurs  in  scientific  re- 
search. 

The  Ptolemaic  system  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
science  was  a  hypothesis  which  assumed  that  the 
heavenly  bodies  revolved  in  the  world  of  space 
just  as  they  seem  to  do  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
earth. 

According  to  this  theory,  the  earth  was  the 
fixed  and  central  point  of  the  Universe. 

This  hypothesis  was  fairly  adequate  for  calculat- 
ing the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies  and 
the  eclipses  of  sun  and  moon,  and  mathematical 
calculations  of  great  accuracy  were  accomplished 
by  the  astronomers  of  antiquity;  but  the  hypo- 
thesis could  not  explain  these  movements. 

No  doubt,  when  Copernicus  (1473-1543)  opposed 
the  Ptolemaic  system  of  the  universe  with  that 
system  which  forms  to-day  the  foundation  of  our 
knowledge  of  the  universe,  the  latter,  when  it  first 
rose  before  his  mind,  was  also  a  mere  hypothesis. 


48  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

But  this  hypothesis  held  its  ground.  It  furnished 
so  admirable  and  satisfactory  an  explanation  of  all 
the  motions  which  we  perceive  in  the  heavenly 
bodies,  that  this  view  of  the  universe,  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  of  the  Church  and  of  many  en- 
lightened men  of  science,  such  as  Bacon  of  Veru- 
lam,  far  outstripped  the  dignity  of  a  mere  theory ; 
it  soon  became  a  scientific  axiom  and  postulate, 
a  truth  which  in  itself  needed  no  further  proof, 
because  it  was  entirely  capable  of  explaining  all 
the  phenomena  that  came  in  its  way — phenomena 
which  otherwise  would  have  remained  inexplicable. 

Let  us  take  another  instance.  When  attention 
was  first  directed  to  fossils,  they  were  thought  to 
be  freaks  of  Nature,  accidental  inorganic  pictures 
in  stone. 

This  was  a  hypothesis ;  but  it  proved  useless  and 
untenable,  because  the  resemblance  between  the 
structure  of  the  fossils  and  the  structure  of  the 
living  organisms  was  far  too  great  to  admit  of 
the  explanation  that  they  were  merely  accidental. 
Then  another  hypothesis  was  taken  up ;  it  was 
assumed  that  fossils  were  relics  and  traces  of 
animals  and  plants  that  had  disappeared. 

This  hypothesis  proved  to  be  correct,  but  it  fell 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  49 

into  disrepute  and  suspicion  owing  to  the  further 
hypothesis  which  proved  untenable,  namely,  that 
the  fossils  were  the  relics  and  traces  of  the  animal 
and  plant  world  that  had  passed  away  with  the 
Flood. 

This  sub-hypothesis  came  before  the  world  in 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  as- 
sumed such  a  palpable  shape  that  the  Swiss 
scientist  Scheuchzer  believed  that  in  the  skeleton 
of  a  giant  salamander  which  was  found  in  the 
famous  Middle  Tertiary  strata  of  Oningen  on  the 
Rhine,  between  Constance  and  Schaffhausen,  he 
had  discovered  the  skeleton  of  a  man  who  had 
been  drowned  in  the  Flood ;  whereupon  he  wrote 
a  learned  treatise  entitled  Homo  Diluvii  Testis,  "  A 
Human  Witness  of  the  Flood". 

When  this  untenable  hypothesis  was  first  given 
up  and  when  people  began  to  see  in  the  fossil  re- 
mains (supported  by  other  results  of  Geology)  the 
records  of  the  history  of  a  slow  and  gradual  de- 
velopment of  plants  and  animals,  then  the  former 
hypothesis  revived,  namely,  that  the  fossils  were 
the  remains  of  submerged  plants  and  animals. 
This  has  become  a  postulate  of  Science  which  no 

one  any  longer  doubts,  and  from  this  postulate, 

4 


50  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

which  could  only  arise  in  the  shape  of  a  hypothesis, 
one  gets  a  magnificent  and  wonderfully  ordered 
world,  endowed  with  many  varieties  of  life,  pos- 
sessing a  pre-adamite  history  which  has  developed 
through  long  periods  of  time  and  which  reaches 
down  to  our  own  day.  This  conception  is  now  the 
common  property  of  almost  all  educated  people. 
Every  geological  cabinet  displays  these  wonders 
of  Creation  in  astonishing  variety  and  order. 

By  these  surprising  and  yet  indisputable  results 
of  science  the  scientific  man  finds  himself  con- 
fronted with  a  number  of  new  questions.  How  is 
one  to  explain  the  origin  of  the  living  and  organic  ? 
Or  the  origin  of  the  different  species  of  plants  and 
animals  up  to  Man  ?  Or  their  differences,  their 
resemblances  ?  Or  the  chronological  order  of  their 
appearance  ? 

None  of  these  questions  has  been  settled  by 
indisputable  facts.  If  a  scientific  man  desires 
to  give  an  answer,  or  an  approximate  answer, 
to  these  questions,  he  must  assume  an  hypo- 
thesis. 

So  long  as  one  thinks  that  everything  actually 
incomprehensible,  or  hitherto  regarded  as  incom- 
prehensible, shows  a  greater  dependence  upon  God, 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  51 

if  it  has  been  called  into  being  by  immediate 
creative  activity  apart  from  any  intervening  natural 
causes,  so  long  will  one  be  inclined  in  the  interests 
of  religion  to  forbid  scientific  research  into  original 
causes  or  to  suspect  Science  of  being  irreligious. 
But  whoever  regards  the  universe  (and  this  is  our 
view)  with  all  its  energies  and  laws  as  a  work  of 
God  who  created,  sustains  and  rules  it — for  such  a  > 
man,  when  he  is  once  really  in  earnest,  the  Divine 
causality  will  not  be  affected  one  hairbreadth  by 
the  discovery  of  the  natural  causes  of  a  pheno- 
menon, any  more  than  if  the  phenomenon  had  no 
natural  causes.  For  in  the  one  case,  as  much  as 
in  the  other,  it  is  the  work  of  God.  A  thoughtful 
student  will  always  be  careful  of  the  use  he  makes 
of  a  hypothesis.  He  will  abandon  it  if  it  be 
proved  useless,  or  when  it  does  not  satisfy  the 
facts  which  it  takes  for  granted ;  but  he  will  not 
allow  such  experiences  to  keep  him  from  starting 
new  hypotheses  and  examining  them  in  the  hope 
that  they  may  serve  to  win  a  satisfactory  explana- 
tion of  the  phenomena. 

In  his  "  Meditations  of  a  Wanderer  "  ("  Betrach- 
tungen im  Sinn  der  Wanderer"),  in  the  second 
book  of  Wilhelm  Meister's  Wanderjahren,  Goethe 


52  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

has  nobly  expressed  this  right  of  hypothesis  in 
these  words  :  "  Man  must  abide  by  the  belief  that 
the  incomprehensible  is  comprehensible,  or  else  he 
would  cease  to  investigate  ". 

II.    Astronomy,  Cosmic  Physics,  and  Chemis- 
try in  Relation  to  Christianity 

The  appearance  of  the  work  De  Revolutionibus 
Orbium  Coelestium  which  Copernicus  published  in 
the  year  of  his  death,  created  a  revolution  in  the 
ideas  that  educated  persons  entertained  of  the 
world  and  its  contents.  The  greatness  of  this 
revolution  one  can  hardly  overestimate. 

The  volume  was  limited  indeed  to  the  earth  and 
solar  system,  but  people  soon  saw  the  weighty 
conclusions  which  were  to  be  drawn  from  this 
new  idea  of  the  world ;  what  had  been  dis- 
covered about  the  position  of  the  sun  and  its 
planets,  with  their  satellites,  was  extended  to  the 
whole  starry  world  and  all  inhabited  space,  and 
this  produced  a  perfectly  new  view  of  the  world, 
vastly  different  from  what  had  hitherto  obtained. 

According  to  the  so-called  geocentric  view  of 
Ptolemy  of  Alexandria  {circa  140  b.c.),  the  earth 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  $$ 

was  the  central  point  of  the  universe — the  sun, 
moon  and  stars  being  lights  in  the  firmament,  the 
motions  of  which  could  be  perceived  and  calculated, 
but  the  nature  of  which  was  entirely  unknown. 
With  all  this  ignorance  about  the  nature,  con- 
tents, and  extent  of  the  world  of  space,  imagina- 
tion had  full  liberty  to  conceive  the  heaven  of 
religion,  i.e.  the  sky  above  our  heads,  as  the  abode 
of  the  glory  of  God  and  as  the  distant  goal  of  the 
Christian  hope,  as  if  it  were  a  kind  of  upper,  though 
still  invisible,  continuation  of  the  firmament. 
There  was  also  ample  opportunity  for  portraying 
the  glories  of  this  heaven  with  all  kinds  of  pictures 
drawn  from  the  imagination.  This  Ptolemaic  geo- 
centric view  of  the  world  was  now  replaced  by  the 
Copernican  heliocentric  view,  according  to  which 
the  earth  is  only  one  of  the  planets  that  circle 
round  the  sun,  while  the  sun  and  not  the  earth  is 
the  middle  point  of  the  Solar  System,  which  is 
itself  again  but  a  small  part  of  the  universe ;  every 
fixed  star  is  itself  a  sun,  and  space  is  of  quite  im- 
measurable extent. 

Now  for  religious  knowledge  and  religious  ideas 
this  revolution  in  the  knowledge  of  the  universe 
was  of  incalculable  importance.    This  may  perhaps 


54  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

be  best  formulated  in  the  briefest  manner  by  stating 
a  fact  which  for  our  religious  faith  is  so  important, 
namely,  that  the  difference  between  the  visible  and 
invisible  has  been  changed  from  what  was  a  quan- 
titative difference  under  the  reign  of  the  Ptolemaic 
system  into  what  is  a  qualitative  difference  under 
the  system  of  Copernicus.  The  earth  with  its 
inhabitants  is  not  thereby  brought  nearer  nor 
removed  farther  away  from  heaven  than  the 
farthest  fixed  star  that  can  be  reached  with  a 
telescope. 

Slowly  indeed  but  with  an  unceasing  triumphal 
progress  the  new  science  of  the  universe  made 
its  way.  Opposition  from  the  side  of  Science  was 
not  wanting,  as  we  have  already  mentioned  in  the 
case  of  Bacon  of  Verulam  (p.  48).  Even  the 
Swedish  Tycho  de  Brahe  (1546-1601)  opposed  his 
own  system  to  that  of  Copernicus,  holding  that 
the  earth  is  the  central  point  of  the  universe 
and  the  sun  and  moon  revolve  round  it,  while  the 
planets  again  go  round  the  sun.  Still  stronger 
was  the  opposition  upon  the  part  of  the  Churches, 
but  strongest  and  most  tenacious  of  all  from  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church.  The  writings  of  Coper- 
nicus from  1616  until  1757  stood  on  the  index  of 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  55 

books  forbidden  in  the  Roman  Church ;  Galileo 
(1564-1642)  fell  twice  into  the  hands  of  the  In- 
quisition, and  his  works  were  first  removed  from 
the  forbidden  list  in  1835. 

In  spite  of  this  the  revolution  in,  and  the  in- 
crease of,  natural  science  produced  by  the  genius 
of  Copernicus  have  long  become  the  common  pro- 
perty of  the   educated.     Moreover  the  Christian 
Churches  have  appropriated  it  and  acquiesced  in 
the   religious    conclusions    drawn   from    the    new 
knowledge  of  the  universe ;  they  have  introduced 
it  into  their  theology,  so  that  on  this  ground  there 
is  nothing  more  to  be  said  concerning  a  conflict 
between  Natural  Science  and  Christianity,  although 
Christian    children   must    still    pass  and  perhaps 
always  pass  through  the  Ptolemaic  theory  of  the 
universe  before  they  reach  the  Copernican. 

I  am  not  aware  of  any  system  of  dogma  that 
would  not  thankfully  accept  and  utilise  the  revolu- 
tion (introduced  by  the  Copernican  system  of  the 
universe)  in  our  idea  of  visible  and  invisible 
being,  viz.,  from  a  quantitative  into  a  qualitative 
difference,  as  an  illumination,  a  deepening,  and  a 
strengthening  of  its  religious  knowledge,  though 
our    theological    and    still    more    our    devotional 


56  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

works,  where  they  speak  of  the  invisible  world, 
could  not  surmount  the  difficulties  that  arise  from 
the  fact  that  we  are  totally  unqualified  to  form 
any  idea  of  existence  apart  from  the  categories 
of  Time  and  Space — categories  which  belong  to 
this  world,  while  the  other  world  is  at  present 
merely  an  object  of  faith  and  hope  and  not  yet 
one  of  sight. 

Thus  in  the  sphere  of  the  relations  between  Astro- 
nomy and  Christianity  we  have  to  note  a  positive 
gain  that  Christianity  owes  to  the  increase  of  our 
scientific  knowledge.  Astronomy  has  helped  us 
to  the  knowledge  that  the  category  of  space  (and 
time)  stretches  over  the  whole  universe,  that  the 
extent  of  this  sphere  is  absolutely  incalculable, 
surpassing  all  our  ideas  of  time  and  space,  and 
that  this  vast  region  is,  nevertheless,  confined 
only  to  the  visible,  whereas  the  heaven  which  is 
revealed  as  the  abode  of  the  Glory  of  God,  the 
seat  from  which  God  directs  the  universe  in  His 
Omnipotence,  Omnipresence  and  Omniscience, 
and  to  which  He  takes  His  own  after  they  have 
left  this  world,  has  no  place  in  it  at  all.  Heaven 
belongs  to  quite  another  and  a  supernatural  cate- 
gory of  existence,  and  our  ideas  of  space,  whether 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  5? 

they  be  large  or  small,  are  irrelevant  in  this  con- 
nection. But  this  Heaven  can  now  be  very  near  or 
very  far  from  every  human  being  before  he  passes 
to  the  World  Beyond,  in  whatever  part  of  the 
present  world  of  space  he  may  be  situated.  This 
is  shown  us  at  once  by  the  fact  that  every  man, 
according  to  his  moral  and  religious  condition, 
can  have  Heaven  or  Hell  within  him.  Moreover, 
there  is  the  experience  we  have  in  private  com- 
munion with  God  in  prayer.  Every  prayer  a 
man  utters  marks  an  ascension  of  his  inner  being 
to  God;  he  is  convinced  that  God  from  His 
Heaven,  omnipresent  in  the  whole  universe,  hears 
him ;  and  the  Founder  of  our  religion  has  ex- 
pressed this  with  incomparable  beauty,  by  teaching 
us  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  to  address  God  with  the 
words  "  Our  Father  which  art  in  Heaven  ". 

From  yet  another  side  our  religious  faith  has 
reason  to  thank  astronomy  for  what  it  has  gained. 
The  Old  Testament  saint,  with  the  total  in- 
adequate knowledge  of  the  world  possessed  by  that 
age,  felt  himself  compelled  to  exclaim  :  "  The 
heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God  and  the  firma- 
ment showeth  His  handywork "  (Ps.  xix.  2). 
Every   advance    we    make    in   our   knowledge    of 


58  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

the  universe  through  astronomy  extends  our  view 
of  the  glory  of  God  and  His  Almighty  Power,  and 
the  deeper  and  more  comprehensive  our  view  has 
become  of  the  extent  of  the  universe  and  the  im- 
measurable host  of  the  heavenly  bodies  in  all 
stages  of  their  development,  the  fuller  is  the  sound 
of  the  song  of  praise  which  to-day  rises  from  our 
lips. 

In  connection  with  this  extension  of  our  view 
there  is  finally  a  further  gain  to  take  into  account, 
for  which  religious  devotion  and  reflection  are 
indebted  to  science.  The  contrast  between  the 
smallness  of  the  space  occupied  by  man  and  the 
loftiness  of  the  mental  powers  of  which  he  is 
accounted  worthy  by  His  Creator,  cannot  be  re- 
cognised in  its  whole  immeasurable  extent  save 
through  the  increase  of  our  astronomical  know- 
ledge. Even  under  the  ancient  idea  of  the  world 
the  sense  of  his  own  littleness  was  present  with 
Man,  as  he  stood  before  the  vastness  of  which  he 
was  accounted  worthy.  It  forced  from  him  the 
exclamation  of  the  Old  Testament  saint :  "When 
I  consider  Thy  Heavens,  the  work  of  Thy  fingers, 
the  moon  and  the  stars,  which  Thou  hast  ordained  ; 
what  is  man,  that  Thou  art  mindful  of  him  ?  and 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  59 

the  Son  of  man,  that  Thou  visitest  him  ?  "  (Ps.  viii. 
3,  4).  To  what  tiny  dimensions  does  the  whole 
earth  shrink,  with  all  its  inhabitants  and  the  in- 
dividual most  of  all,  when  we  direct  our  gaze,  with 
the  aid  of  astronomy,  to  the  immeasurable  uni- 
verse with  its  countless  heavenly  bodies  and  from 
thence  turn  to  our  little  earth,  to  its  inhabitants, 
and  last  of  all  to  our  own  selves !  And  yet  this 
tiny  little  being  called  "Man"  can  rejoice  in  his 
ability  to  receive  the  Creator  and  Lord  of  the 
whole  universe  into  his  consciousness,  and  even  to 
recognise  him  as  his  Heavenly  Father,  to  love 
Him,  and  to  have  communion  with  Him. 

Cosmic  physics  and  chemistry  offer  to  our  reli- 
gious knowledge  and  experience  a  service  similar 
to  that  offered  by  astronomy,  though  in  a  more 
limited  sense.  For  while  this  branch  of  science 
demonstrates  the  unity  of  all  the  laws,  energies, 
and  material  of  the  universe  and  the  heavenly 
bodies,  including  the  earth,  it  thereby  strengthens 
and  completes  our  reasons  for  regarding  the  differ- 
ence between  the  Visible  and  the  Invisible  World 
not  as  a  quantitative  but  as  a  qualitative  differ- 
ence, providing  fresh  cause  for  adoring  meditation 
on  the  Omnipotence  and  Glory  of  the  Creator. 


60  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Up  till  now,  the  relation  between  Science  and 
Christianity  in  this  sphere  is  evidently  quite  a 
peaceful  one.  But  as  soon  as  cosmic  physics  ex- 
tended with  perfect  justice  the  knowledge  of  the 
indestructibility  both  of  energy  and  matter — which 
we  had  at  first  discovered  by  the  investigation  of 
the  laws,  energies  and  materials  to  be  found  on  the 
earth — to  the  laws,  energies  and  material  of  the 
universe,  then,  indeed,  this  science  became  the  prin- 
cipal armoury  from  which  the  atheistic,  materi- 
alistic, and  pantheistic  systems  took  weapons 
wherewithal  to  combat  the  Christian  view  of  the 
world.  For  this  reason  we  must  examine  cosmic 
physics  and  chemistry  somewhat  more  closely. 

The  law  of  gravitation,  the  law  of  the  inde- 
structibility of  matter,  and  the  law  of  the  inde- 
structibility of  energy  are  the  three  basal  truths 
of  which  we  shall  treat. 

The  three  laws  of  motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
discovered  by  Kepler  (1571-1630)  and  the  law  of 
falling  bodies  discovered  by  Galileo  before  Kepler, 
suggested  to  the  genius  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  the 
thought  of  finding  the  higher  unity  of  both  in 
gravitation  as  the  universal  characteristic  of  all 
matter,  from  the  masses  of  the  greatest  of  the 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  61 

heavenly  bodies  down  to  the  particles  of  dust  in 
the  air. 

When  we  are  told  it  was  by  seeing  an  apple 
fall  from  a  tree  that  the  thought  of  a  universal  law 
of  gravitation  throughout  space  flashed  through 
the  mind  of  the  great  scientist,  this  story  illus- 
trates better  than  anything  else  the  greatness  and 
the  scope  of  the  discovery.  As  regards  this  tale, 
Robert  Mayer  says  in  the  fifth  section  of  his 
Dynamics  of  the  Heavens :  "  One  of  the  most  tre- 
mendous enigmas,  the  problem  of  the  cause  of  the 
irregular  course  of  the  planets,  Newton  solved,  and 
solved  it,  so  it  is  said,  by  meditating  on  the  fall 
of  an  apple.  There  is  nothing  improbable  about 
this,  for  if  one  is  convinced  that  between  small 
and  great  there  is  not  a  qualitative  but  a  quanti- 
tative difference,  and  if  one  refuses  to  heed  the 
whisperings  of  an  ever-vivid  imagination  and 
essays  to  trace  the  same  laws  throughout  the 
least  and  the  greatest  processes  of  Nature,  then 
is  one  on  the  right  way  to  discover  truth.  This 
universal  validity  lies  in  the  very  essence  of  the 
laws  of  Nature  ;  it  is  a  touchstone  for  the  correct- 
ness of  human  theories.  We  watch  the  fall  of  an 
apple,  and  discover  that  there  is  a  law  hidden  at 


62  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

the  root  of  this  phenomenon  ;  instead  of  the  earth 
put  the  sun,  instead  of  the  apple  a  planet,  and— 
we  have  the  key  to  the  mechanics  of  the  heavens 
in  our  hands  !  " 

The  second  point  in  the  historical  succession 
of  the  new  science  in  the  sphere  of  physics  and 
chemistry  was  the  Indestructibility  of  Matter,  which 
we  owe  to  the  French  chemist  Lavoisier  (1743-94)- 
This  fact  has  become  the  foundation  of  all  our 
modern  chemistry,  and  the  enormous  strides  both 
in  knowledge  and  technical  achievement  which  we 
owe  to  this  axiom  are  the  best  proof  of  its  accuracy. 

The  familiar  meteorites  or  aerolites,  small  bodies 
that  rush  through  space  and  every  now  and  then 
fall  on  the  earth,  contain  pure  elements,  to  the 
number  of  about  twenty,  which  occur  also  on  the 
earth.  No  sooner  were  meteorites  first  chemically 
examined,  which  was  not  until  the  beginning  of 
last  century,  than  it  became  necessary  to  draw  con- 
clusions about  the  similarity  between  the  matter 
of  which  the  universe  is  composed  and  that  of  the 
earth.  But  the  Spectrum  Analysis  which  Robert 
William  Bunsen  and  Kirchhoff  (1861)  brought 
jointly  before  the  public  in  their  work,  Chemical 
Analysis  through   Spectral  Observations,   and  made 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  63 

the  common  property  of  science,  was  the  first 
thing  to  bring  the  chemical  elements  of  the  great 
heavenly  bodies,  i.e.  of  the  sun  and  fixed  stars, 
within  our  knowledge.  Thereafter  one  could  begin 
to  speak  of  a  cosmic  chemistry.  This  has  raised 
the  absolute  identity  of  the  matter  of  the  universe 
and  of  the  earth  to  an  indisputable  certainty,  al- 
though, of  course,  the  possibility  is  not  excluded 
that  the  spectrum  may  still  reveal  in  one  or  other 
of  the  heavenly  bodies  elements  which  have  not 
as  yet  been  proved  to  exist  on  the  earth. 

In  the  year  1842,  that  is,  nineteen  years  before 
the  introduction  of  the  Spectrum  Analysis,  a  new 
and  epoch-making  discovery  came  to  light,  namely 
the  knowledge  of  the  Indestructibility  of  Energy — 
a  discovery  worthy  to  rank  alongside  of  Lavoisier's 
Indestructibility  of  Matter.  There  were  no  less 
than  six  men  who  independently  reached  this 
discovery,  the  Germans,  Robert  Mayer,  Holtz- 
mann,  and  Helmholtz,  the  Frenchman  Hirn,  the 
Englishman  Joule,  and  the  Dane  Colding ;  but 
Robert  Mayer  (1814-78)  had  the  honour  of  stepping 
first  before  the  public  with  his  discovery,  and  of 
stating  the  vastness  of  its  significance  for  the  whole 
range  of  cosmic  physics.     The  first  announcement 


64  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

appeared  in  the  small  treatise  (scarcely  ten  pages 
in  length)  entitled  "  Remarks  Concerning  the 
Energies  of  Inanimate  Nature,"  which  Robert 
Mayer  published  in  the  Annals  of  Chemistry 
and  Pharmacy  (Wöhler  and  Liebig)  in  May, 
1842.  The  second  appeared  in  his  Contributions 
to  the  Dynamics  of  the  Heavens  in  Popular  Form. 
Both  treatises  were  reprinted  in  R.  Mayer's 
Mechanics  of  Heat.  The  first-named  at  its  ap- 
pearance was  scarcely  noticed,  and  when  it  was 
noticed  it  met  with  only  aversion  and  ridicule. 
Its  contents  have  long  since  been  recognised 
as  one  of  the  greatest  discoveries  that  has  ever 
enriched  the  human  mind,  directing  technical 
work  into  perfectly  new  and  successful  paths. 
The  whole  of  electrotechnics,  for  example,  rests 
ultimately  on  Mayer's  discovery. 

This  discovery  is  in  its  prime  elements,  as  is 
the  case  with  all  truth,  exceedingly  simple ;  in 
fact,  now  that  it  has  been  made  and  is  generally 
known,  it  reminds  one,  as  Mayer  himself  has 
somewhere  said,  of  Columbus's  egg.  It  consists 
in  the  proof  that  not  only  matter  but  also  energy 
is  absolutely  indestructible,  and  that  these  two 
energies,  heat  and  motion  (probably  all  physical 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  65 

energies,  i.e.,  the  formerly  so-called  imponder- 
ables, light,  electricity,  and  magnetism,  with  the 
forces  of  chemical  processes  of  combination)  vary 
mutually  according  to  a  constant,  measurable  rela- 
tion, which  can  be  put  into  numbers  and  formulae. 
This  relation  (numerically  424  metres,  to  which 
Mayer  raised  it  from  the  originally  accepted 
number  365,  raised  afterwards  to  425)  is  as 
follows :  The  heating  of  a  given  weight  of  water 
at  i°  Celsius  (Centigrade)  is  just  the  same  achieve- 
ment as  the  raising  of  a  similar  weight  of  any 
quantity  of  matter  to  a  perpendicular  height  of 
424  metres.  Or  vice  versa,  a  weight  that  from 
a  perpendicular  height  of  424  metres,  quickly 
or  slowly,  vertically  falls,  rolls,  or  is  impelled 
downwards,  produces,  mechanically  speaking,  as 
much  heat  as  is  required  to  raise  the  same  weight 
of  water  i°  C.  This  relation  is  called  the  Me- 
chanical Equivalent  of  Heat,  and  this  is  for  Mayer 
the  Archimedean  point  from  which  he  draws  the 
most  astonishing  and  for  the  most  part  convinc- 
ing conclusions  regarding  the  movements  of  the 
heavenly  bodies,  the  heat  of  the  sun  and  its  causes 
and  effects,  inorganic   motions  and  occurrences, 

such  as  tide  and  earthquake,  currents  of  air  and 

5 


66  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

water,  and  the  relationship  of  physical  processes 
in  the  body  to  those  of  mechanical  energy. 

Thus  we  see  that  universal  and  unvarying  va- 
lidity of  the  laws  of  iNature  throughout  time  and 
space,  indestructibility  of  matter,  and  indestructi- 
bility of  energy,  are  the  chief  principles  by 
which  Cosmic  Physics  and  Chemistry  gain  their 
great  theoretical  and  practical  success ;  nor  is 
there  any  doubt  that  they  are  the  very  strongest 
weapons  which  are  used  by  the  atheistic,  material- 
istic, and  pantheistic  systems,  or,  as  (since  Häckel's 
time)  they  are  rather  called,  the  monistic  systems — 
in  their  warfare  against  the  Christian  view  as  a 
contemptible  Dualism.  Have  they  a  right  to  use 
these  ?  The  answer  to  this  question  leads  us,  as 
do  the  systems  themselves,  far  beyond  the  region  of 
science  and  deep  into  the  world  of  metaphysics. 
Hence  we  shall  take  leave  to  answer  this  question 
at  the  point  at  which  we  ourselves  have  to  leave 
the  region  of  science,  step  into  the  realm  of  meta- 
physics, and  speak  of  the  different  theories  of  the 
world.  At  the  present  stage  of  our  inquiry,  when 
we  are  still  dealing  with  pure  natural  science,  it 
is  sufficient  to  point  to  the  fact  that  the  very 
pioneers  to  whom  we  owe  the  whole  present-day 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  67 

increase  of  our  knowledge  of  the  world,  were  al- 
most without  exception  Christians  by  conviction. 
According  to  Dennert,  Lavoisier  certainly  was  in- 
different about  religion,  but  it  is  generally  known, 
with  regard  to  Copernicus,  Galileo,  Kepler,  Newton, 
and  Robert  Mayer,  that  they  were  Christians. 
In  the  year  of  Mayer's  death  (1878)  I  published 
a  small  treatise  on  his  Christian  standpoint,  which 
proves  this  from  his  writings  and  letters. 

Any  one  who  desires  to  know  not  only  the  re- 
ligion of  leading  scientific  men,  but  of  scientific 
men  as  a  whole,  will  find  a  thorough  and,  for  re- 
ligion, a  surprisingly  favourable  answer  in  the  little 
work  of  Dr.  Dennert,  The  Religion  of  Scientific  Men 
(Berlin,  1901,  sixth  edition). 

I  have  no  need  to  go  further  into  the  Kant- 
Laplace  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  our  solar 
system,  which  assumes  the  solar  system  to  have 
arisen  from  a  revolving  cosmic  mass  of  vapour  in 
distant  ages  and  from  its  products,  as  well  as  again 
from  other  revolving  fragments,  since  I  have  already 
stated  the  religious  and  Biblical  Idea  of  Creation 
and  have  demonstrated  that  this  in  no  way  ex- 
cludes the  origin  of  the  individual  contents  of  the 
universe  by  means  of  intermediate  causes.      For 


68  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

the  hypothesis  does  not  extend  to  the  question  of 
the  origin  of  the  whole  universe,  but  confines  itself 
to  the  origin  of  our  present-day  solar  system  and 
finally  to  the  origin  of  fixed  stars  which  resemble 
the  solar  system.     Thus  it  does  not  conflict  with 
our  religious  thought   and  experience.      That  it 
has  only  the  rank  of  an   hypothesis  arises  from 
the  fact  that  while  for    a   long  time  it   enjoyed 
an  almost  universal  acceptance  as  valid,  yet,  on 
the  ground  of  observations  made  by  spectral  ana- 
lysis, other  hypotheses  have  been  set  up  in  opposi- 
tion, as  for  instance  that  of  the  English  astronomer 
Lockyer  (born  in  1836).     Hence,  in  the  region  of 
astronomy,  in  spite  of  the  tremendous  upheavals 
and   advances  which  these  sciences  have   intro- 
duced into  our  conception  of  the   world,  and  in 
spite  of  the  ancient  and  Biblical  idea  of  the  uni- 
verse having  been  actually  replaced  by  the  modern, 
we  can  see  how  nevertheless  all  is  at  peace  be- 
tween Science  and  Christianity.     Nay  more,  we 
may  hold  that  while  the  modern  conception  of  the 
universe  has  replaced  that  of  the  ancients,  so  far 
from  having  thereby  marred  the  achievements  that 
have  been  won  in  the  name  of  religion,  achieve- 
ments which  mankind  has  gained  under  the  sway 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  69 

of  the  ancient  idea  of  the  universe,  it  has  really 
only  enhanced  and  clarified  them. 

III.  The  Realm  of  Organisms  on  the  Earth- 
Charles  Darwin  and  His  Successors 

Returning  now  from  the  universe  to  our  earth, 
and  inquiring  into  the  origin  and  development  of 
the  realm  of  organisms  and  living  creatures,  we 
feel  as  if  we  were  leaving  the  firm  ground  of 
assured  principles  and  axioms  to  set  foot  on  the 
uncertain  ground  of  hypotheses. 

We  shall  find  that  all  questions  on  this  subject 
are  in  a  very  nebulous  state.  And  yet  we  must 
now  say  "  tua  res  agitur  " — the  matter  turns  on 
what  immediately  touches  you,  for  mankind  with 
its  wealth  of  mental  and  spiritual  life  and  its  ex- 
tensive history  pertains  on  its  physical  side  to  this 
realm  of  organisms. 

Nevertheless  all  knowledge  in  this  sphere  is 
not  uncertain.  Tremendous  strides  have  to  be 
noted  in  our  permanent  knowledge,  and  the  work 
being  done  by  men  of  science  is  more  indefatigable 
than  ever. 

Until  about  a  hundred  years  ago  science  had 
not  as  yet  approached  at  all  closely  the  question 


70  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

of  the  origin  of  different  species  of  plants  and  animals/ 
It  contented  itself  with  the  fact  of  their  existence, 
and  their  maintenance  by  further  reproduction, 
but  confined  itself  to  the  investigation  of  their 
structure  and  manner  of  life,  and  spent  all  its 
keenness  of  intellect  on  classification. 

Much  less,  had  any  one  ventured  to  solve  the 
problem  of  the  first  appearance  of  Man.  The  origin 
of  life  itself  was  only  drawn  into  the  circle  of 
scientific  research  in  so  far  as  it  raised  the 
question  whether  lower  organic  forms  did  not 
still  spring  from  the  inorganic.  This  method  of 
generation  was  called  "generatio  sequivoca "  or 
"  spontanea,"  and  there  was  a  strong  disposition 
to  assume  such  a  method  of  generation.  This 
hypothesis  has  long  been  abandoned,  since  all 
experiments  concerning  the  origin  of  organisms, 
even  of  the  very  lowest,  traced  them  back  to  germs 
already  in  existence. 

Several  causes  combined  to  keep  scientists  in 
this  state  of  ignorance.  The  most  effective  of 
all  was  perhaps  the  doctrine  of  the  Immutability 
of  Species,  which  the  Swedish  scientist  Linnaeus 
(1707-78)  had  brought  to  a  victorious  issue. 

The  question  of  their  origin  was  thought  to  be 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  71 

solved  by  the  biblical  accounts  of  Creation,  accord- 
ing to  which  God  had  made  plants  and  animals  in 
their  own  order  and  man  from  the  dust  of  the 
earth.  Since  the  biblical  idea  of  the  Divine  Crea- 
tion had  not  been  closely  examined,  and  since  the 
general  opinion  was  pretty  much  that  this  idea 
excluded  the  operation  of  intermediate  causes  in 
the  creation  of  the  different  creatures,  every  close 
investigation  into  the  causes  of  the  origin  of  the 
different  species  seemed  to  imply  an  assault  both 
on  the  authority  of  Holy  Scripture  and  on  Christian 

belief. 

But  a  number  of  very  successful  discoveries 
gradually  made  it  absolutely  imperative  for  scien- 
tific research  to  examine  more  closely  than  before 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  different  species 
of  plants  and  animals,  and  of  the  origin  of  man. 

In  the  first  place,  we  must  mention  the  results 
of  geology  and  palaeontology  (the  science  of  pre- 
adamite  organisms  on  earth)  and  the  geographical 
distribution  of  plants  and  animals,  together  with 
those  of  comparative  anatomy.  In  the  second 
place  there  were  the  researches  made  into  the 
embryonic  evolutionary  history  of  the  individual 
types,  and  the  discovery  of  cells  as  the  original 


72  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

unit  in  all  plants  and  animals.  These  branches 
of  pure  science  all  blossomed  during  the  past 
century. 

It  was  geology  and  palaeontology  especially 
that  opened  up  a  world  of  unimagined  wealth, 
with  a  history  of  pre-adamite  plants  and  animals, 
long  ago  submerged,  which  went  back  for  countless 
millenniums.  Ever  since  Sir  Charles  Lyell  (1797- 
1875),  the  English  geologist,  discovered  and  taught 
that  forces  still  operative  on  earth  are  the  key  to 
past  changes,  it  has  been  found  that  thousands 
and  millions  of  years  must  have  elapsed  ere  man 
came  upon  the  scene.  This  gave  ample  scope  for 
the  imagination  to  account  for  the  coming  and 
passing  of  the  different  species  of  plants  and  ani- 
mals. The  temporal  succession  of  the  strata 
which  contain  organic  remains  shows  on  the 
whole  a  distinct  ascent  from  the  lower  to  the 
higher,  and  an  ever  more  marked  approach  to  the 
level  of  present-day  organisms  on  earth,  until 
finally  Man  steps  into  existence  as  the  end  and 
crown  of  the  earthly  creation.  The  science  of  the 
geographical  distribution  of  plants  and  animals, 
which  is  still  in  its  infancy,  has  proved  further 
that  the  mainland  and  the  islands  of  the  earth 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  73 

are  divided  into  distinct  regions,  each  of  which 
has  its  peculiar  vegetable  and  animal  forms,  and 
that  the  very  fauna  and  flora  which  are  peculiar 
to  a  given  region  have  geological  predecessors  far 
back  in  the  Tertiary  Period.     These  latter  are  fre- 
quently larger  than  their  existing  representatives. 
It  was  comparative  anatomy,  however,  which  dis- 
covered that  all  organisms,  beginning  with  those 
whose   remains    are   found   in   the  oldest  forma- 
tions and  ending  with  extant  plants  and  animals, 
not  only  represent,  as  a  whole,  an  ascent  from  a 
lower  to  a  higher  structure,  but  that  the  struc- 
tures of  the  organisms  in  existence  at  the  present 
day  are  akin  to  those  of  the  species  that   have 
vanished,  and  that  in  the  whole  animal  and  veget- 
able kingdom  there  is  a  wide  universal  unity  of 
classification  to  which  plants  and  animals  now  ex- 
tinct belong  as  much  as  do  those  now  in  existence. 
As  a  case  in  point,   to  show  that  the   Unity  of 
Classification  is  correct,  we  are  at  liberty  to  take 
the  fact  that  there  are  so-called  permanent  types 
of  species  which   have  been  preserved  from  the 
oldest  formations  in  which  they  are  found,  up  to 
the  present,   entirely  or  nearly  unchanged,  e.g., 
among   the   invertebrate    animals    the   bivalvular 


74  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

lingula  and  terebratula  with  the  cephalopod  nau- 
tilus, among  vertebrates  the  fish  ceratodus  and  the 
reptile  hatteria. 

It  was  the  Homology  of  Organs,  above  all,  that 
was  brought  to  light  by  comparative  anatomy ; 
and  this  urged  the  scientific  mind  to  seek  for  an 
explanation  of  the  phenomenon.  By  the  Homo- 
logy of  Organs  we  understand  the  fact  that  within 
one  and  the  same  class  all  the  organs,  especially 
those  in  the  permanent  and  constituent  parts  in 
the  skeleton,  are  fashioned  according  to  one  and 
the  same  type,  and  vary  in  accordance  with  this 
type  throughout  their  most  widely  divergent 
modifications.  This  is  especially  true  of  the 
spine,  where  Goethe  and  Oken  recognised  long 
ago  in  the  skull  a  modified  vertebra.  So  too,  for 
example,  the  hands  and  feet  of  a  man,  the  hands 
of  a  monkey,  the  paws  of  a  beast  of  prey,  the  hoof 
of  a  horse,  the  feet  of  an  ox,  the  fore-limbs  of  a 
mole,  the  fins  of  a  whale,  and  the  wings  of  a  bat 
down  to  the  smallest  bones,  all  correspond  to  each 
other.  They  can  all  be  registered  with  the  same 
letters;  they  are  "homologous"  to  the  smallest 
particular.  The  perception  of  this  suggested  to 
scientists  like  Cuvier,  C.  E.  v.  Baer,  Agassiz,  and 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  75 

Richard  Owen,  the  idea  of  types  in  the  organic 
kingdom  and  of  an  archetype  in  the  highest  class 
maintained  under  all  modifications  and  represent- 
ing a  plan  realised  in  ever  higher  differentiations 
and  ever  more  highly  organic  developed  modifica- 
tions, until,  in  the  case  of  plants,  among  the  most 
highly  organic  dikotyledon  plants  having  two  seed- 
lobes,  in  the  case  of  the  animal  world,  among  mam- 
mals, and,  lastly,  in  the  case  of  mankind,  it  has 
found  its  highest  and  at  the  same  time  its  most 
strongly  modified  expression.  Hence,  despite  his 
aversion  to  the  theory  of  the  Descent  of  Man, 
Agassiz  owned:  "Man  is  the  goal  to  which  the 
whole  animal  creation  has  striven,  from  the  first 
appearance  of  the  oldest  palaeozoic  fishes  " ;  and 
Richard  Owen,  who  agreed  with  the  theory  of  De- 
scent, observed  :  "  Man,  from  the  beginning  of 
organisms,  was  present  as  an  ideal  on  earth  ". 

From  yet  another  side  came  attempts  to  ex- 
plain the  origin  of  the  different  species  of  plants 
and  animals  and  also  of  man,  by  means  of  the 
descent  of  higher  forms  from  lower,  with  the 
possibility  that  this  descent  was  completed  by  a 
gradual  evolution.  Such  were  the  researches  into 
the   embryonic    evolution    of   animals,    and    such 


76  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

were  the  analogous  researches  of  botanists.  It 
would  take  us  too  far,  were  I  to  attempt  to  give 
a  survey  of  these  highly  interesting  studies.  Any 
one  who  wishes  to  become  better  acquainted 
with  the  subject  will  find  a  useful  account  in  the 
introduction  to  the  Handbook  of  the  Comparative 
and  Experimental  Evolution  Theory  of  Vertebrates, 
edited  by  Dr.  Oskar  Hertwig  (Jena,  igoi).  Weis- 
mann in  his  Lectures  on  the  Theory  of  Descent  and 
Reinke  in  his  Die  Welt  als  Tat  ("  The  World  as 
Reality")  also  give  a  helpful  survey.  Only  the 
pioneers  and  founders  of  the  modern  theory  of 
Evolution  can  be  named  here  :  Pander  (1794-1865), 
and  his  still  more  important  friend  and  fellow  in 
research,  Charles  Ernest  von  Baer.  Ere  ever 
Schleiden  had  proved  the  cell  to  be  the  germ-unit 
of  all  plants  (in  1838)  and  Schwann  (in  1839) 
had  proved  it  the  origin  of  all  animals  up  to 
the  most  completely  developed  organism,  the 
foundation  of  all  modern  biological  research  had 
been  laid  by  these  two  men,  who  paved  the  way 
for  the  whole  modern  theory  of  Evolution.  Pander 
in  1817  wrote  his  Contributions  to  the  History  of 
the  Evolution  of  the  Chicken  in  the  Egg,  and  Von 
Baer   between    the   years   1828-37  published   his 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  77 

work,  Observations  and  Reflections  on  the  History  of 
the  Evolution  of  Animals.  Of  the  latter  work, 
Huxley  says  that  it  contains  the  deepest  and 
soundest  philosophy  of  zoology  and  biology  that 
has  ever  been  given  to  the  world,  while  Källiker 
says :  "  Von  Baer's  works  may  be  mentioned 
both  for  the  wealth  and  excellence  of  their  facts 
and  for  the  thoroughness  and  scope  of  their 
general  remarks,  as  the  best  that  the  embryo- 
logical  literature  of  any  age  and  nation  has  to 
show?\  Herr  v.  Baer  in  this  work  already  treats 
of  the  so-called  biogenetical  law  (the  law  of  the 
origin  of  living  beings)  which  subsequently  under 
Häckel's  guidance  was  destined  to  play  so  great  a 
part  in  the  hands  of  the  followers  of  Darwin. 
Since  it  seems  as  if  men  of  science  were  after 
all  inclined  to  confine  the  application  of  this  law  to 
the  limitations  which  Von  Baer  had  given  it,  we 
will  pause  to  touch  upon  this  matter  for  a  little. 
The  biogenetical  law,  in  the  form  in  which  the 
comparative  anatomist  John  Frederick  Meckel 
(1781-1833)  formulated  it,  runs  thus :  "  The  em- 
bryo of  higher  animals  passes  through  the  extant 
forms  of  the  lower  animals,  and  the  evolution  of  the 
individual  animals  follows  the  same  laws  as  those  of 


78  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

the  whole  range  of  animals  ".  Von  Baer  discusses 
the  question  in  his  History  of  Evolution  (vol.  i.,  pp. 
199-294),  refutes  the  first  part  of  the  assertion,  and 
limits  the  resemblance  between  the  steps  of  the 
embryonic  development  and  the  extant  forms 
of  the  lower  animals  to  this,  that  the  individual 
development  is  an  advance  from  a  more  general 
form  to  an  individual  (p.  255),  or  that  the  evolu- 
tionary history  of  the  individual  is  the  history  of 
the  growth  of  its  individuality  in  every  respect  (p. 
263).  He  lays  emphasis  wholly  on  the  separate 
development  of  the  chief  types  in  the  animal  world. 
Among  these  he  distinguishes  four,  the  peripher- 
istic  or  radiated  type,  the  geniculated  or  longi- 
tudinal, the  massy  or  mollusc,  and  the  vertebrate 
type. 

Thus,  about  the  middle  of  the  previous  century, 
the  idea  of  explaining  the  origin  of  the  whole 
systematic  order  of  the  organic  world  by  means 
of  a  Descent,  and  possibly  by  a  Development  of  the 
higher  forms  from  lower  and  closely  related  forms, 
was  in  the  air.  At  last,  with  the  appearance  of 
Charles  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  on  24th  Nov., 
1859,  matters  came  to  a  head. 

His  idea  certainly  had  its  forerunners,  of  whom 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  79 

however  little  notice  was  taken.     Erasmus  Dar- 
win, the  grandfather  of  Charles,  suggested  in  his 
Zoonomia  (1794)  that  species  came  into  existence 
by  descent  and  evolution.     Etienne  Geoffroy  St. 
Hilaire  in  1795  arrived  at  the  same  conclusion, 
but  published  it  first  in  the  year  1828,  and  was 
thereby  in  1830  drawn  into  the  contest,  immortal- 
ised by  Goethe,  which  was  waged  in  the  Academy 
at  Paris  with  Cuvier.      In  this  he  was  defeated. 
The  next  upholder  of  the  idea  is  Treviranus  in 
his  Biology  or  Philosophy  of  Living  Nature,  which 
appeared  in  1802  ;  then  came  the  most  noteworthy 
of  them  all — the  Frenchman  Lamarck  (1744-1829), 
who  published  his  views  first  in  1801,  and  expanded 
them  further  in  his  Philosophique  Zoologique  (1809) 
and  in  his  Natural  History  of  Invertebrata  (18 15). 
He  too  remained  unnoticed   until   his  name  was 
rescued   from    oblivion    during    the    great    move- 
ment   initiated    by    Darwin,  when    he   won    high 
esteem  in  the  so-called    "  Neo-Lamarckianism  ". 
In    the    year    1844   there    appeared    in    England 
an  anonymous  book,  brilliantly  written,   entitled 
Vestiges  of  the  Natural  History  of  Creation.     The 
author  was  unknown  till  his  death,  in  1871.     He 
was  the  Edinburgh  publisher  and  author,  Robert 


% 


80  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Chambers.  The  book  excited  a  great  deal  of 
interest,  and  before  the  appearance  of  the  works 
of  Darwin  went  through  ten  editions.  Darwin, 
in  the  historical  sketches  which  precede  his 
book  on  the  Origin  of  Species,  ascribes  to  him  the 
merit  of  having  paved  the  way  for  the  accept- 
ance of  the  new  teaching  in  England.  Moreover 
the  Frenchmen  Naudin  and  Lecoq  should  also  be 
named,  and  lastly  the  German  Schaaffhausen, 
who  in  the  year  1855  advocated  a  continuous 
evolution  of  organic  forms  on  earth,  and,  after  the 
appearance  of  Darwin,  entered  with  much  zeal 
into  the  problems  of  the  Descent  of  Man. 

Those  whose  lot  it  was  to  live  through  the 
sixties  and  seventies  of  the  past  century  can 
never  forget  the  intellectual  stir  caused  by  the 
appearance  of  Darwin's  book  on  the  Origin  of 
Species.  It  was  at  once  patent  to  any  one  that  the 
origin  of  the  human  species  in  animal  soil  must 
be  the  consequence  of  the  new  teaching,  although 
Darwin's  book  on  the  Descent  of  Man  only  appeared 
in  1871.  The  stir  was  inevitable.  The  new  views 
and  ideas  to  which  Darwin  gave  the  chief  impetus 
were  bound  to  stir  men's  minds  to  their  very 
depths,   on  scientific,   philosophic,  and  above  all 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  81 

on  religious  grounds.  Until  now  there  had  lain 
a  great  darkness  over  the  question  of  the  origin 
of  the  human  race,  on  which  there  fell  only  one 
strong  ray  of  light,  namely,  that  from  the  first 
two  chapters  of  the  Bible  narrative,  which  tells 
us  that  at  the  end  of  the  animal  creation  God 
made  man  in  His  Own  Image  and  fashioned  him 
from  the  dust  of  the  earth.  Now  suddenly,  for 
reasons  which  seemed  to  become  more  and  more 
obvious,  man  was  supposed  to  have  a  long  succes- 
sion of  animal  ancestors — and  to  have  been  called 
into  existence  from  one  of  these. 

It  would  lead  us  far  beyond  the  limits  of  our 
present  study,  even  were  it  possible,  if  I  were  to 
attempt  so  much  as  a  partial  survey  of  the  flood 
of  literature  which  the  appearance  of  Darwin's 
work  called  forth.  Still  less  do  I  wish  to  give  a 
purview  of  the  laborious  and  detailed  studies  in 
every  region  of  plant  and  animal  life,  which  the 
British  naturalist  brought  to  the  notice  of  all  the 
civilised  nations  of  Europe  and  America,  from  his 
far-famed  country  estate  in  Down. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  I  think  it  due  to 

those  readers  who  have  only  indefinite  ideas  of 

the  theory  of  Darwin  and  his  followers,  to  briefly 

6 


82  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

recapitulate   its    main   features    and    to    indicate 
the  direction  of  its  subsequent  developments. 

Darwin  did  not  occupy  himself  with  the  Origin 
of  Life  and  Living  Creatures  on  the  Earth.  He 
began  his  researches  where  he  had  to  presuppose 
the  existence  on  our  planet  of  living  creatures  in 
their  simplest  forms,  and  in  the  last  sentence  of 
his  work  on  the  Origin  of  Species  he  takes  for 
granted  that  life  with  all  its  energies  was  origin- 
ally breathed  by  the  Creator  into  one  or  two 
forms.  Even  in  the  Descent  of  Man  (vol.  i.,  p. 
30)  he  designates  questions  such  as  those  con- 
cerning the  origin  of  life  or  the  development  of 
mental  capacity  in  the  lowest  organisms,  as  prob- 
lems for  a  distant  future — doubting  if  they  could 
ever  be  solved  by  man.  The  question  of  the  origin 
of  life,  which  is  so  nearly  related  to  Darwin's 
theory — was,  after  the  appearance  of  the  Origin 
of  Species,  raised  and  treated  in  the  most  thorough 
manner  by  Ernst  Häckel,  one  of  Darwin's  most 
decided  supporters  in  Germany.  Professor  Häckel 
treats  this  question  in  the  first  of  his  popular 
scientific  books,  his  Natural  History  of  Creation 
{Natürliche  Schöpfungsgeschichte),  in  the  thirteenth 
lecture,   and   he   returns  to  the  same  subject  in 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  83 

his  last  work,  The  Wonders  of  Life  {Lebenswunder). 
In  both  he  declares  that  the  question  of  the  origin 
of  life  is  finally  solved  by  the  modern  theory  of 
Evolution.  Häckel  starts  from  the  fact  that  there 
are  still  in  existence  to-day  low  forms  of  ani- 
malculse,  as,  for  example,  the  Monera,  which  were 
discovered  by  him,  which  cannot  be  reckoned 
to  possess  even  cells.  (They  are  represented  very 
clearly  on  the  title-page  of  his  Natural  History  of 
Creation.)  In  these  primitive  animalculse  neither 
the  organic  matter  nor  the  organic  shape  nor 
the  organic  movement  have  anything  that  does 
not  belong  to  the  inorganic  also.  The  organic 
matter  called  Plasma  or  Protoplasm  is  said  to  be  a 
highly  albuminous  carbon  compound,  which,  one 
must  suppose,  could  arise  in  a  purely  mechanical 
way  like  all  chemical  compounds.  This  supposi- 
tion is  of  course,  to  begin  with,  only  an  hypo- 
thesis, and  the  researches  of  Reinke  and  others 
have  not  exactly  corroborated  it.  The  latter  have 
proved  that  protoplasm  is  a  mixture  of  numerous 
chemical  compounds,  of  which  albumen  is  only  a 
part.  The  organic  form  constitutes  no  difficulty 
to  the  mechanical  theory.  This  is  to  be  admitted 
as  soon  as  organic  motion  is  forthcoming,  for  the 


84  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

organic  form  is  a  product  of  the  organic  motion. 
Yet  until  now  no  one  has  succeeded  in  proving 
even  the  possibility  that  the  movement  of  organic 
animalculse  may  have  arisen  in  a  purely  mechan- 
ical way  from    the   movement   of  the   inorganic. 
Häckel    says   that  organic  motion  is  in  the  last 
instance  to  be  referred  to  the  qualities  of  carbon. 
He  discusses  this  more  closely  in  the  third  edition 
of  his  Natural  History   of  Creation    (p.    298),  as 
follows  :  "  In  reality,  the  peculiar  chemical  and 
physical  qualities   of  carbon    and   especially  the 
fluidity  and  the  facility  of  decomposition  of  the 
most  elaborate  albuminous  carbon  compounds  are 
the   sole  and  mechanical   causes    of  the  specific 
phenomena  of  motion,  by  which  the  organic  is 
distinguished  from   the  inorganic,   and  which   in 
the  usual  sense  of  the  word    are   termed    Life." 
Now  Häckel  grants  that  this  is  only  an  hypoth- 
esis.     Yet  Fechner's   researches   (1801-87)  seem 
to  bear   heavily  against   this  hypothesis,   and  as 
far  as  I    know  they  have    not   as   yet   been  con- 
tradicted.     (See  his  Contributions  to  the   Creative 
and  Evolutionary  History  of  Organisms.     Leipzig, 
1873.)     According  to    him   the  critical  difference 
between  the  inorganic    and  the  organic  consists 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  85 

in  the  method  of  motion.  The  molecular  portions 
of  the  organic  animalculse  move  in  consequence 
of  an  impulse  that  is  renewed  from  within  to 
without,  in  a  revolving  direction ;  but  this  is  not 
the  case  with  the  molecular  portions  of  inorganic 
bodies.  How  this  new  rotatory  movement  has 
come  into  existence  remains  at  present  an  enigma. 
Men  of  science  who,  like  August  Weismann, 
are  firmly  convinced  that  life  can  be  explained  as 
arising  from  inorganic  matter  and  motion,  and 
who  therefore  combat  the  old  idea  of  a  special 
physical  energy,  are  at  one  here.  Viewing  the 
movement  originated  by  Darwin  they  exclaim : 
"  The  great  enigma  has  been  solved  in  our 
day — the  enigma  of  how  the  fittest  can  arise 
without  the  co-operation  of  determining  purposive 
energies "  (Weismann,  Lectures  on  the  Theory  of 
Descent,  Jena,  Fischer,  1902 ;  2nd  ed.  1905,  vol. 
ii.,  p.  441).  And  yet  the  same  author  (vol.  i. 
"  The  Theory  of  Germinal  Plasma,  "  Lectures  17 
and  18)  grants  that  we  are  completely  ignorant 
of  the  most  elementary  phases  in  the  origin  of 
life.  He  says  that  the  germinal  plasma  (Keim 
plasma),  i.e.,  the  hereditary  substance  of  the 
germ   cell,   is  not  a   loosely  connected  combina- 


86  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

tion  of  matter,  but  a  structure,  a  piece  of  archi- 
tecture, in  which  definite  positions  are  assigned  to 
different  parts.  The  forces  which  assign  these 
positions — which  he  designates  as  vital  or  elective 
affinities — are  those  which  cling  to  the  bearers  of 
life,  the  "  Biophora,"  in  contrast  to  the  inorganic 
molecular  particles  ;  they  are  inner  forces  of  which 
we  know  nothing  more  than  that  they  do  work — 
but  of  which  we  have  as  yet  no  more  detailed  or 
immediate  knowledge.  This  confession  of  ignor- 
ance must  logically  take  away  the  chief  ground 
for  the  polemic  against  the  existence  of  a  special 
life-energy  ;  it  leaves  the  question  still  an  open 
one.  In  fact  recently  there  has  been  no  lack 
of  support  for  the  standpoint ;  take,  for  instance, 
Bunge,  and  Driesch  in  his  later  works — al- 
though he  had  formerly  supported  the  mechanical 
theory  of  the  existence  of  life.  Helmholtz  and 
Lord  Kelvin  have  advanced  the  hypothesis  that 
organic  germs  were  hurled  to  the  earth  by  Meteor- 
stones  from  other  celestial  bodies.  Yet  this  bold 
and  highly  improbable  hypothesis  would  not  solve 
the  question  of  the  origin  of  life  ;  it  would  only 
remove  it  farther  away  to  other  worlds,  and 
thereby  render  it  indeed  for  ever  insoluble. 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  87 

Let  us  now  return  to  Darwin's  theory.  In  order 
to  explain  the  development  of  higher  species  from 
lower  by  natural  means,  he  sets  out  from  two  facts. 
The  one  is  the  fact  that  all  individuals  of  one  and 
the  same  kind,  together  with  all  their  specific  re- 
semblances, show,  notwithstanding,  individual  dif- 
ferences— that  is,  the  law  of  individuality  or  vari- 
ability. The  other  fact  is  this,  that  every  indi- 
vidual has  a  tendency  to  transmit  all  its  qualities 
to  posterity,  not  only  the  character  of  its  species, 
but  also  its  individual  character :  this  is  the  law  of 
heredity. 

He  now  considers  man's  method  in  the  artificial 
breeding  of  the  varieties  of  domestic  animals  and 
garden  plants.  The  breeder  or  grower  simply 
takes  those  individual  types  of  a  class  that  have 
individual  qualities  which  he  wishes  to  retain  and 
develop  in  a  further  direction ;  he  excludes  from 
further  reproduction  those  individual  types  which 
do  not  possess  the  required  characteristics  or 
possess  them  only  in  an  inferior  degree  ;  he  con- 
tinues in  the  same  way  with  the  next  generation, 
and,  by  the  continual  operation  of  the  two  laws 
above  named,  he  will,  after  a  few  generations, 
have   grown    a   variety   in   which   the   individual 


88  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

characteristics   have   become  fixed   and   common 
to  all. 

It  is  now  of  importance  to  observe  whether 
nature  in  its  natural  selection  does  not  uncon- 
sciously act  according  to  the  same  principles  and 
attain  to  the  same  results  as  man  does  with  his 
artificial,  deliberate  selection  ;  and  whether  it  does 
not  indeed  attain  results  which  finally  explain  the 
origin  of  all  organisms,  even  the  highest  and  most 
permanent,  from  one  primitive  form  or  a  few 
simple  primitive  forms,  according  to  the  principle 
of  natural  selection. 

Darwin  finds  this  question  answered  in  the 
affirmative,  and  he  arrives  at  this  answer  by 
means  of  the  following  conclusions. 

The  whole  animal  and  vegetable  world  pro- 
duces infinitely  more  germs  of  life  than  can 
possibly  exist,  and  so  in  the  world  of  organisms 
there  is  a  continual  struggle  for  existence  going 
on.  Every  individual  must  force  its  entrance 
into  the  conditions  of  its  existence  against  a 
number  of  other  individual  types  both  of  its  own 
and  of  other  species. 

Those  individuals  will  be  more  likely  to  be 
victorious,    which    possess    individual    characters 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  89 

that  are  more  favourable  for  the  continuance  of 
the  individual  than  are  those  of  the  other  types. 
These  characters  are  reproduced  in  the  next 
generation,  when  there  will  again  be  individuals 
that  have  a  character  favourable  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  individual  in  a  yet  higher  degree, 
or  that  add  to  this  advantageous  quality  yet 
further  individual  qualities  which  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  favour  the  individual  type  from 
another  side.  This  is  natural  selection  through 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for 
existence. 

Altered  conditions  of  life  and  environment,  and 
the  adaptation  of  organisms  to  the  new  relations  in 
shape,  colour,  nourishment,  and  habits  of  life,  are 
the  principal  causes  of  those  individual  changes, 
the  accumulation  of  which  through  many  genera- 
tions has  so  great  an  effect. 

If  we  have  only  sufficiently  great  periods  of 
time  behind  us  to  allow  us  to  imagine  every  step 
of  evolution  as  exceedingly  small  and  almost 
unnoticeable,  natural  selection  offers  us  not  in- 
deed an  exclusive  but  certainly  a  preponderat- 
ing means  of  explaining  the  evolution  of  the 
whole  animal  and  vegetable  world  from  one  or  at 


90  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

most  a  few  of  the  simplest  primitive  forms.  In 
his  work  on  the  Origin  of  Species  and  in  that  on 
the  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  domesticity,  he  casually  names 
sexual  selection  also  as  an  important  factor  in  natural 
selection.  In  his  work  on  The  Descent  of  Man,  how- 
ever, he  treats  of  sexual  selection  in  such  detail 
that  he  has  even  put  it  into  the  title  of  his  book. 
He  ascribes  to  this  a  pre-eminent  significance  in 
producing  beauty  of  shape,  colour  and  tone,  as 
well  as  in  developing  energy  and  intelligence. 
Moreover  he  places  the  transition  from  the  animal 
and  human  entirely  under  the  law  of  gradual 
evolution  and  the  dominion  of  natural  selection. 
It  is  especially  social  life  and  the  habits  and 
instincts  of  society,  through  the  elevation  and 
ennobling  of  which  have  arisen  all  the  intellectual, 
moral,  and  religious  qualities  that  make  man 
what  he  is. 

Darwin  had  to  imagine  a  material  foundation 
in  order  to  explain  the  complicated  facts  of 
heredity,  reaction,  the  reproduction  of  lost  mem- 
bers, and  such  like.  For  this  purpose,  he  sug- 
gested in  his  book  on  Variations,  "The  Hypothesis 
of  Pangenesis".      He  supposes  that  the  cells  of 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  91 

which  every  organism  consists,  give  off  particles 
of  infinitesimal  dimensions  which  circulate  freely 
through  the  whole  body,  and  which  by  dividing 
multiply  themselves  and  can  subsequently  be 
developed  into  cells  resembling  those  from  which 
they  germinate.  He  names  these  particles  "  little 
germ  cells"  or  "little  germs,"  "gemmules". 
He  supposes  that  these  germs  in  their  slumbering 
condition  have  a  mutual  elective  affinity  to  one 
another  which  brings  about  their  union,  either  in 
the  form  of  buds  or  of  sexual  elements,  the 
two  chief  means  of  reproduction  with  higher 
organisms. 

This  theory,  which  recalls  the  hypothesis  of 
"  panspermatismus  "  that  Buffon  had  already  in- 
troduced in  his  Universal  Natural  History  (1749), 
found  little  response,  chiefly  because  it  was  not 
capable  of  proof.  On  the  other  hand,  it  became 
the  mother  of  similar  other  theories,  against  which 
however  the  same  reproach  can  be  urged.  They 
are  of  no  importance  for  our  inquiry,  because  in 
their  case  no  religious  principle  is  at  stake. 

On  page  79  we  said  that  about  the  middle  of 
the  past  century  the  thought  of  explaining  the 
origin   of   organisms    by   a  descent   from    higher 


92  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

forms,  which  again  sprang  from  closely  related 
lower  forms,  was  already  in  the  air.  We  must  now 
add,  after  describing  Darwin's  theory,  that  even 
the  idea  of  natural  selection  was  already  current. 
Before  Darwin's  work  had  appeared,  Alfred 
Russell  Wallace  (born  1822),  during  his  travels 
in  South  America,  and  especially  in  the  Malay 
Archipelago,  had  independently  of  Darwin  come 
to  exactly  the  same  idea  of  natural  selection ; 
but  he  waived  any  rivalry  with  Darwin  for  the 
honour  of  priority  in  the  discovery,  because  Darwin 
had  worked  quietly  at  these  ideas  longer  than 
he  himself  had,  and  had  begun  also  to  collect 
materials  by  way  of  proof. 

Wallace,  however,  made  "  Man  "  an  exception  to 
this  method  of  origin,  because  he  recognised  in  all 
that  makes  man  what  he  is,  not  only  a  quantita- 
tive but  a  qualitative  difference  from  the  animal 
world.  He  put  man  higher.  In  other  respects,  as 
distinguished  from  Darwin — and  from  many  Dar- 
winians who  are  more  Darwinian  than  their  master 
— he  held  firmly  to  the  exclusive  reign  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  selection  in  the  evolution  of  the  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdom,  while  Darwin  himself,  over- 
whelmed by  the  preponderance  of  facts  showing 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  93 

that  the  origin  of  many  important  organs  was  not 
to  be  explained  by  natural  selection,  limited  the 
dominion  of  the  principle  of  selection.  He  says  in 
his  Descent  of  Man  (part  i.,  chap.  2) :  ''In  the  earlier 
editions  of  my  Origin  of  Species  I  perhaps  attributed 
too  much  to  the  action  of  natural  selection  or  the 
survival  of  the  fittest.  ...  I  did  not  formerly  consider 
sufficiently  the  existence  of  structures,  which,  as 
far  as  we  can  at  present  judge,  are  neither  beneficial 
nor  injurious ;  and  this  I  believe  to  have  been  one 
of  the  greatest  oversights  as  yet  detected  in  my 
work.  ...  An  unexplained  residuum  of  change 
must  be  left  to  the  assumed  uniform  action  of 
these  unknown  agencies,  which  occasionally  induce 
strongly  marked  and  abrupt  deviations  of  structure 
in  our  domestic  productions." 

Now,  in  seeking  to  indicate  the  various  direc- 
tions in  which  Darwin's  theory  has  subsequently 
been  developed,  we  again  find  ourselves  con- 
fronted with  fairly  numerous  hypotheses.  Dar- 
win's theory  stands  before  us  as  an  entirely  fixed 
unity  which  may  be  summed  up  thus :  The 
various  species  of  organic  existences  prior  to  the 
appearance  of  man  arose  by  descent  from  one 
another  in  gradual  evolution,  the  chief  cause  of 


94  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

this  development  being  natural  selection  through 
the  survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.  To  the  closely  knit  unity  of  this  theory, 
next  to  its  wealth  of  data,  we  must  ascribe  its 
exceptional  and  rapid  success.  Yet  as  soon  as 
one  tries  to  form  any  idea  of  what  transpired 
at  the  origin  of  the  first  individuals  of  a  new 
species,  it  will  be  found  that  this  theory  contains 
in  itself  three  theories,  which  abstractly  or  con- 
cretely must  be  kept  separate.  Each  of  these 
theories  requires  its  special  proof,  and  these  proofs 
again  carry  very  unequal  weight  in  their  power  of 
persuasion. 

The  most  universal  theory,  which  will  maintain 
its  ascendency  when  others  have  partly  or  entirely 
become  untenable,  is  the  theory  of  the  origin  of 
species  by  means  of  descent.  The  second  theory 
is  that  of  the  origin  of  species  by  means  of  descent 
along  the  line  of  perfectly  gradual  evolution.  This 
theory  will  possibly  divide  the  field  with  the 
theory  of  a  spasmodic  descent  of  species.  Its 
supporters  give  this  spasmodic  descent  different 
names.  Oswald  Heer  names  it,  "  Reconstruction 
of  Species  "  ;  Källiker,  "  heterogeneous  produc- 
tion "  ;  Korschinsky,  "  heterogenesis  "  ;  Hartmann, 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  95 

"  heterogenism  "  ;  Heinrich  Baumgärtner,  "  muta- 
tion of  types  by  means  of  germ-metamorphosis  "  ; 
Hugo  de  Vries,  "mutation".  The  third  theory 
which  in  the  case  of  Darwin  forms  the  foundation 
alike  for  the  theory  of  descent  and  for  that  of 
evolution,  is  the  theory  of  the  evolution  of  species  by 
natural  selection  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

The  question  now  emerges  :  "  Have  we  found 
in  natural  selection  the  motive  power  of  all  evolu- 
tion, or  has  it  failed  to  justify  itself  at  all,  or 
must  it  divide  its  authority  with  other  known  or 
unknown  causes  of  evolution?" 

All  three  theories  are  certainly  as  yet  mere 
hypotheses,  and  they  must,  according  to  their 
nature,  remain  so,  for  they  all  occupy  themselves 
with  the  explanation  of  occurrences  which  took 
place  before  the  appearance  of  man ;  many  of 
them  can  be  traced  back  innumerable  millenniums 
prior  to  his  appearance,  and  are,  therefore,  in- 
capable of  direct  observation. 

And  they  are  hypotheses  which  differ  greatly  in 
their  value. 

The  most  general  theory,  which  may  still  carry 
weight  when  the  two  other  theories,  that  of  evolu- 
tion  and   that   of   natural    selection,    fall  to  the 


96  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

ground,  is  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  the  higher 
species  from  closely  related  lower  species  by  means 
of  descent.  This  theory  has  fairly  taken  root.  In- 
deed, one  might  say  that  it  has  become  the 
general  postulate  of  all  scientific  research  into 
the  origin  of  species.  It  has  a  right  to  this  com- 
manding position,  for  it  is  founded  on  a  series 
of  undeniable  facts,  and  on  conclusions  derived 
therefrom,  whose  convincingness  is  apparent. 

The  facts  are  culled  from  the  spheres  of  geology, 
palaeontology,  the  geological  distribution  of  plants 
and  animals,  as  well  as  from  comparative  anatomy 
and  from  the  evolutionary  history  of  animal  and 
vegetable  types;  they  have  been  formulated  on 
pages  73  f. 

The  conclusions  to  which  these  facts  shut  us  up 
are  the  following  :  Geology  and  palaeontology  show 
us  innumerable  millenniums  in  which  the  animal 
and  vegetable  world  has  developed  in  an  ascending 
scale  from  its  lowest  forms  up  to  the  appearance 
of  man.  They  show  us  at  the  same  time  in  a 
thousand  ways  that,  apart  from  the  continually 
recurring  appearance  of  new  forms  of  organisms, 
essentially  the  same  forces  which  are  effective 
to-day  have  held  sway  through  all  these  periods. 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  97 

Comparative  anatomy  shows  us  the  systematic 
connection  of  all  these  organisms  with  extant 
plants  and  animals,  reaching  up  to  man  himself. 
Finally,  the  history  of  evolution  shows  us  that  every- 
thing, even  the  most  highly  developed  individual  in 
the  animal  and  vegetable  kingdom,  has  come  into 
existence  by  a  gradual  evolution  from  the  simple 
impregnated  cell  up  to  the  perfect  organism. 

If  we  wished  now  to  assume  that  the  first  indi- 
viduals of  a  new  species  had  been  always  called 
into  existence  from  the  inorganic,  apart  from  any 
genealogical  connection  with  the  nearest  related 
type  of  the  preceding  species,  we  should  destroy 
everything — and  that  is  a  great  deal — that  the 
new  species  had  in  common  with  the  preceding 
as  regards  its  organisation.  We  should  imply 
that  the  Creator  or  Nature,  or  by  whatever  name 
we  designate  the  power  which  calls  the  new 
species  into  existence,  ignored  all  that  this  power 
had  already  summoned  into  being  out  of  what 
approximated  to  the  new  species,  and  that  it 
always  began  afresh. 

Still  greater  would  be  the  difficulty  of  giving  up 
the  idea  of  descent,  when  we  admit  the  following 
consideration. 


98  RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Experience  shows  us  that  individuals  of  one 
species,  with  the  exception  of  the  single-celled  and 
the  lowest  existences  of  all,  never  come  into  being 
in  their  developed  form  but  by  an  embryonic 
evolution.  According  to  all  analogy,  this  must 
also  have  been  the  case  with  the  first  individual 
of  a  species.  But  where  would  such  an  embryo 
have  had  its  protecting  and  nourishing  covering 
except  in  the  uterus  of  a  closely  related  lower 
species  ?  This  is  true  of  all  the  higher  organic 
species  up  to  man. 

The  theory  of  descent  has  thus  in  fact  become 
the  general  basis  of  all  scientific  research  into  the 
origin  of  species.  I  know  of  but  one  scientist 
who  rejects  the  theory  of  descent,  I  mean  the 
zoologist  Albert  Fleischmann,  in  his  book  The 
Theory  of  Descent,  or  Popular  Lectures  on  the  Rise 
and  Fall  of  a  Scientific  Hypothesis  (Leipzig,  Georgi, 
i goo)  and  in  his  subsequent  work,  The  Darwinian 
Theory,  which  appeared  in  1903  and  was  issued  by 
the  same  firm.  But  as  he  not  only  seems  abso- 
lutely to  identify  the  idea  of  descent  with  the 
idea  of  gradual  evolution,  but  also  proceeds  to 
adduce  reasons  which  tell  against  the  origin  of  a 
species  by  natural  selection,  as  reasons  contrary 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  99 

to  the  origin  of  a  species  by  gradual  descent,  it 
is  not  probable  that  he  either  has  or  ever  will 
have  many  followers. 

As  soon  as  we  accept  the  theory  of  descent,  how- 
ever, a  whole  host  of  questions  arise  which  clamour 
for  some  reply. 

We  begin  with  that  class  of  questions  for  which 
natural  science  owes  us  an  answer.  Must  we  con- 
ceive the  first  appearance  of  organic  existences 
in  such  a  way  as  that  only  a  single  organic  germ 
at  some  time  and  place  came  into  existence,  from 
which  has  sprung  up  the  whole  world  of  organisms, 
plants  and  animals?  Or  did  many  germs  come 
into  existence  simultaneously  ?  Were  these  germs 
similar  or  dissimilar  ?  And  were  these  the  begin- 
ning of  many  similar  or  dissimilar  genealogical 
trees  ?  Must  we  assume  that  a  spontaneous 
generation  of  the  organic  from  the  inorganic  took 
place  only  once  upon  a  time,  or  that  in  the  long 
prehistoric  age  of  the  Earth,  repeated  generations 
of  this  kind  took  place  ?  How  is  the  origin  of 
sensibility  and  free  motion  to  be  explained  ?  Or 
the  first  appearance  of  self-consciousness  and 
free  self-determination,  i.e.,  the  first  appearance  of 
man  with  the  entire  wealth  of  human  intelligence 


100         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

which  has  developed  from  his  primitive  origins? 
The  genealogy  of  proto-cells,  which  the  botanist 
of  Marburg,  Albert  Wigand  (1821-86),  has  stated, 
we  must  also  reckon  among  the  questions  raised 
and  directly  answered  by  an  hypothesis,  but  by  an 
hypothesis  which  is  devoid  of  all  proof.     This  he 
does  in  his  work,  The  Genealogy  of  the  Protocells, 
as  the   Solution  of  the  Problem   of  Descent,    or   the 
Origin  of  Species  without  Natural  Selection  (Vieweg, 
Brunswick,  1872).     Wigand  refers  the  descent  of 
organic  existences  not  to  the  succession  of  species 
but  to  the  succession  of  original  cells.    He  regards 
them  all  as  living  in  water.     The  most  primitive 
cells  contain  only  the  characteristics  of  the  general 
organic  world,  of  the  animal  and  vegetable  king- 
doms  in   their    common    elements.     From  these 
original  cells  were  produced  by  cellular  distribu- 
tion the  original  cells  of  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms ;  from  the  original  cells  of  both  kingdoms 
those  of  the  principal  types ;   from    these    again 
those  of  the  classes  ;  from  these  lastly  the  orders  ; 
from  these  the  families ;  from  these  in  turn  the 
genera,  and  from  these  finally  the  proto-cells  of 
the  species.     It  was  only  after  the  original  proto- 
cells   of   the    species   were    produced    that   these 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  101 

developed  into  the  perfect  representatives  of 
species,  which  then  continued  to  be  reproduced 
in  a  way  with  which  we  are  all  familiar. 

We  will  answer  all  the  above-mentioned  ques- 
tions as  Emil  du  Bois  Reymond  had  to  answer 
them  :  "  Ignoramus,"  "  We  don't  know,"  and  per- 
haps "  Ignorabimus,"  "  We  shall  never  know  ". 

Another  set  of  questions  which  the  theory  of 
descent  involves  is  more  easily  answered,  or  rather 
allows  of  far  greater  varieties  of  possible  answers. 
Every  one  of  these  possible  answers  has  found 
some  scientific  adherents,  and  the  contradiction 
or  adjustment  of  these  different  possibilities  is 
equivalent  to  the  history  of  the  Darwinian  theory 
up  to  the  present  day.  The  questions  are :  "  Must 
we  think  of  the  descent  of  species  in  such  a 
way  that  the  higher  species  were  developed  very 
gradually  from  those  immediately  below  them,  by 
exceedingly  small  and  almost  invisible  transitions, 
as  is  invariably  the  case  with  individual  varia- 
tions,— so  that  the  theory  of  descent  and  of  evo- 
lution would  be  identical  ?  Or  did  the  higher 
order  of  species  appear  spasmodically  in  the 
region  of  the  closely  related  lower  order?  Or 
did    gradual    evolution    and    spasmodic    progress 


s 


102         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

succeed  each  other  by  turn  ?  And  whenever  a 
new  species  arose  by  gradual  evolution,  what 
was  the  motive  power  of  this  evolution  ?  Was 
it  natural  selection,  or  were  there  other  forces 
concerned,  and — if  so — what  ?  Or  was  it  natural 
selection  in  combination  or  permutation  with  other 
forces  ?  Finally,  where  natural  selection  held 
sway,  was  the  individual  variation,  from  which 
natural  selection  always  takes  its  start,  undeter- 
mined or  strictly  determinate  ? 

The  conception  which  has  found  widest  accept- 
ance, in  answering  the  above-mentioned  questions, 
not  only  among  scientists  but  also  among  the 
uninitiated,  is  the  idea  that  the  theories  of  descent 
and  of  evolution  are  identical,  and  that  the  theory 
of  the  origin  of  species  by  means  of  descent  from 
each  other  means  nothing  else  than  that  the  species 
have  originated  from  each  other  in  immeasurably 
long  periods  of  time  by  means  of  gradual  evolu- 
tion. This  evolution  is  conjectured  to  have 
happened  so  gradually  that  the  difference  between 
two  generations  is  hardly  noticeable,  while  in  the 
course  of  millions  of  years  it  has  extended  over 
the  whole  vast  realm  of  organisms,  extinct  as  well 
as  extant.     It  is  interesting  to  see  over  what  vast 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  103 

spaces  of  time  the  imagination  thus  claims  to 
sweep.  Häckel  tells  us,  in  the  very  first  note  to  his 
Riddle  of  the  Universe,  that  the  time  during  which 
there  has  been  organic  life  on  the  earth  may  lie 
between  the  minimum  number  of  100,000,000 
years  and  the  maximum  of  1,400,000,000  years. 
The  minimum  number  would  be  divided  into 
geological  periods  thus:  1.  Archäozoical  {Pri- 
mordial), the  period  of  the  skull-less  animals, 
52,000,000  years.  2.  Palaeozoic  {Primary),  the 
period  of  fishes,  34,000,000  years.  3.  Mesozoic 
(Secondary),  the  period  of  reptiles,  11,000,000 
years.  4.  Canozoic  (Tertiary),  the  period  of  the 
mammals,  3,000,000  years.  5.  Anthropozoic 
{Quaternary),  at  least  100,000  years  =  0*1,000,000. 
Let  us  imagine  this  era  as  a  day  of  twenty- 
four  hours,  as  his  pupil  Henry  Schmidt  has  done, 
and  we  get  for  the  Primordial  Period  twelve  hours 
and  thirty  minutes,  for  the  Primary  Period  eight 
hours  and  five  minutes,  for  the  Secondary  Period 
two  hours  and  thirty-eight  minutes,  for  the  Ter- 
tiary Period  forty-three  minutes,  for  the  Qua- 
ternary two  minutes,  while  the  6,000  years  of 
man's  civilisation,  the  so-called  "  World  History  " 
would  occupy  but  the  space  of  five  seconds. 


104         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Many  circumstances  contribute  to  popularise 
very  widely  the  idea  that  the  theories  of  Descent 
and  of  Evolution  are  identical. 

In  the  first  place  it  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the 
unbroken  unity  in  which  Darwin  himself  advanced 
his  theory,  which  procured  for  it  a  welcome. 
According  to  this  theory  Descent  and  Evolution 
are  essentially  the  same,  and  the  motive  power 
of  evolution  is  natural  selection  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Darwin  himself  grants  one  important 
modification,  a  modification  not  granted  by  all  his 
adherents — viz.,  that  there  are  several  changes  as 
yet  unexplained ;  perhaps  also  a  greater  modi- 
fication, viz.  the  possible  need  of  assuming  an 
operation  similar  to  the  operation  of  those  un- 
known influences  which  in  domestic  propagation 
bring  to  light  sharply  defined  and  sudden  depar- 
tures from  the  type. 

But  perhaps  in  a  still  higher  degree  it  was  in 
the  interest  of  the  system  called  Monism,  advanced 
and  eagerly  preached  by  Häckel,  to  hail  a  theory 
that  banished  the  idea  of  purpose  from  Natural 
Science  and  undertook  to  replace  it  by  the  exclu- 
sive reign  of  a  mechanically  operative  Causality. 
Consequently  almost  all  who  reject  a  theistic  con- 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  105 

ception  of  the  world — with  the  exception  of  Rudolf 
Virchow  (1821-1903),  who  has  always  urged  a  pru- 
dent caution — rallied  enthusiastically  round  this 
theory  of  evolution,  as  the  freshest  and  firmest 
support  and  basis  of  their  pantheism,  atheism,  or 
materialism,  as  the  various  shades  of  what  is  now 
called  monism  were  described.  Not  only  Häckel 
but  all  adherents  of  this  monism  outdo  each  other 
in  their  praises  of  this  achievement  in  science.  I 
may  reasonably  pass  over  the  strong  language  of 
Ludwig  Büchner,  the  most  popular  supporter  of 
pure  materialism;  but  even  monists,  who  still 
leave  religion  a  corner  somewhere,  are  never  tired 
of  praising  Causality  for  its  banishment  of  tele- 
ology, i.e.  the  theory  of  purpose  or  tendency  in 
Nature.  I  mentioned  above,  on  page  86,  Weis- 
mann's  exclamation,  "  Our  age  has  solved  the 
great  problem,  of  how  the  fittest  can  come  into 
being  without  the  co-operation  of  forces  that  have 
any  aim  in  view  ".  In  his  Theory  of  Descent  (vol. 
i.,  p.  63)  he  remarks:  "The  philosophic  signifi- 
cance of  natural  selection  lies  in  its  exhibition  of  a 
principle  that  has  no  aim  in  view  and  yet  brings 
about  what  is  fitted  to  some  end  ".  In  volume  i., 
page  264,    similar   words  are    also  to    be    found. 


106         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

The  Jena  zoologist,  Ziegler,  takes  his  stand  on 
the  same  ground.  In  his  lecture  on  the  present 
position  of  the  theory  of  descent  in  zoology,  de- 
livered on  26th  September,  1901,  before  the  Ham- 
burg Association  of  Scientists  and  Doctors  (Jena, 
G.  Fischer,  1902),  page  18,  he  starts  with  a 
sentence  from  Häckel's  Natural  History  of  Creation. 
"When  Darwin  established  the  theory  of  natural 
selection  by  means  of  the  struggle  for  existence, 
he  discovered  not  only  the  most  important  cause 
of  organic  formation  and  recasting,  but  also  the 
final  answer  to  one  of  the  greatest  philosophical 
problems,  namely,  the  question  :  How  can  adapta- 
tions, fitted  to  some  end,  arise  mechanically, 
without  purposive  causes  ? "  Even  the  Am- 
sterdam botanist,  Hugo  de  Vries,  who  by  his 
Theory  of  Mutation  (Leipzig,  Veit  &  Co.,  1901),  made 
an  opening  for  the  long-neglected  theory  of  a 
partially  spasmodic  descent  of  species  (cf  p.  102), 
by  noting  such  mutations  in  the  plants  of  the 
Oenothera  Lamarckiana,  says  in  section  1,  par.  26 : 
"  The  supreme  value  of  the  Darwinian  Theory 
of  Selection  obviously  lies  in  its  reference  of 
adaptability  in  the  world  to  purely  natural 
causes,     without     recourse     to    any    teleological 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  107 

theory.  It  is  to  this  that  the  theory  of  de- 
scent owes  its  universal  acceptance  at  the  present 
day." 

It  is  evident  to  every  one  that  the  assertion  that 
the  discovery  of  natural  causes  excludes  the  work- 
ing of  forces  tending  or  striving  to  a  purpose, 
passes  beyond  the  region  of  Natural  Science  far 
into  that  of  philosophy.  We  do  not  entirely 
blame  this  encroachment  into  the  philosophical 
and  more  especially  into  the  metaphysical  sphere. 
Every  scientist  needs  a  coherent  theory  of  the 
universe,  and  as  Natural  Science  is  not  sufficient 
of  itself  to  form  such  a  theory,  he  has  to  call 
philosophy  to  his  aid.  Moreover  we  hold  that 
philosophy  to  be  the  more  fertile  which  rests,  as  is 
the  case  with  our  modern  works  of  philosophy,  on 
scientific  observations,  rather  than  a  philosophy 
which  constructs  Nature  out  of  metaphysical 
principles,  as  was  that  of  Schelling,  Steffens 
and  Hegel,  and  recently  also  of  Karl  Planck. 
But  as  peace  between  Science  and  Christianity 
reigns  in  the  sphere  of  pure  Natural  Science,  war 
really  beginning  when  we  enter  the  domain  of 
philosophy,  we  must  not  examine  more  closely  at 
present  this  denial  of  the  existence  of  forces  that 


108         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

have  an  aim ;  our  present  business  is  to  survey 
the  progress  of  Darwinian  research. 

The  order  of  succession  in  our  account  of  these 
theories  leads  us  now  from  the  theory  of  descent 
to  the  theory  of  evolution.  This  has  a  number 
of  facts  to  adduce  on  its  behalf,  but  they  all 
indicate  the  possibility,  even  the  probability,  that 
gradual  evolution  and  spasmodic  appearance  of 
new  qualities  are  alternate.  When  the  question 
arises  whether  the  world  of  organisms  has  one 
or  more  genealogical  trees,  the  theory  leaves 
us,  as  we  have  already  shown,  entirely  in  the 
lurch. 

It  is  ontogeny,  above  all,  the  theory  of  the  origin 
of  individuals  by  gradual  evolution,  which  is  fa- 
vourable to  the  theory  of  evolution.  The  higher 
organisms  all  arise  by  an  entirely  gradual  evolu- 
tion in  almost  unnoticeable  transitions  from  the 
impregnated  egg,  which  represents  a  single  cell, 
up  to  the  completed  organism,  or — in  the  vege- 
table kingdom — from  single-celled  seed-kernels  to 
the  perfect  plant.  But  even  in  the  life-story  of 
the  embryo  there  is  a  varied  succession  of  more 
and  less  productive  periods,  so  that  if  the  know- 
ledge of  "ontogeny"  were  to  be  regarded  as  the 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  109 

key  to  our  knowledge  of  "  phylogeny,"  i.e.  the 
origin  of  the  whole  stem  of  any  species,  order, 
or  class,  much  will  point  to  the  probability  that 
gradual  development  in  a  species,  kind,  etc., 
alternates  with  the  abrupt  appearance  of  new 
qualities. 

This  probability  has  been  made  a  certainty  by 
the  discoveries  of  palaeontology.  Several  creatures 
in  the  past  ages  of  the  world  have  such  a  wealth 
of  species  and  show  so  many  forms  of  transition, 
that  they  suggest  a  transition  into  each  other  by 
an  entirely  gradual  evolution — e.g.  the  ammonites 
and  several  snakes,  the  countless  species  of  the 
"helix,"  the  famous  "valvata,"  or  the  "  plan- 
orbis"  from  Steinheim  near  Heidenheim.  But 
in  ithe  overwhelming  majority  of  cases,  such 
gradual  transitions  of  species  are  not  to  be 
found.  Several  families,  e.g.,  the  "  trilobites," 
a  kind  of  "crustacean"  of  the  old  Silurian  and 
Devonian  periods,  appear  suddenly  only  to  vanish. 
Moreover,  while  extremely  close  successions  of 
fossil  mammals,  such  as  the  forerunners  of  the 
horse,  prove  a  descent  of  one  species  from  another 
quite  irrefragibly,  they  are  nevertheless  far  from 
proving   any    perfectly   gradual    evolution ;    they 


110         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

seem  rather  to  point  to  spasmodic  approximations 
to  the  present  day  form  of  a  horse. 

Even  were  the  origin  of  the  entire  organic 
world  to  be  referred  to  a  single  genealogical  tree 
by  means  of  a  perfectly  gradual  evolution,  Natural 
Science  is  still  far  from  providing  a  clue  to  this 
region  of  facts,  although  hypotheses  in  this  sphere 
have  been  rampant  and  still  are  so  to-day.  It  is 
to  be  noted,  especially,  that  transitions  of  whole 
classes  or  whole  types  from  one  to  the  other  have 
hardly  been  found  anywhere.  Häckel's  attempt, 
e.g.  to  make  the  invertebrates  come  into  exist- 
ence from  the  tunicaries  by  way  of  evolution  from 
an  ascidian  larva  to  the  lowest  order  of  fish, 
the  amphioxus,  which  he  regards  as  the  original 
mammal,  is  now  pretty  generally  abandoned. 
In  reality  the  discovery  of  the  kidney  in  the 
amphioxus  by  Boveri  made  a  genetic  bridge  be- 
tween it  and  the  articulata  (August  Pauly).  And 
indeed,  more  recently,  facts  have  been  brought  to 
light  by  Oskar  Jäckel  in  Berlin,  which  suggest 
the  land  rather  than  the  old  idea  of  the  sea  as 
the  mother  of  all  living  things,  and  raise  the 
question  whether  the  more  highly  developed  sea- 
creatures,  from  the  fish  upwards,  did  not  betake 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  111 

themselves  once  upon  a  time  from  the  land  to  the 
water.  In  short,  in  this  and  similar  questions, 
owing  to  the  increasing  wealth  of  material  at 
our  command,  we  are  more  than  ever  inquirers 
and  still  very  far  removed  from  the  goal  of  dis- 
covery. 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  theory  which  formed  for 
Darwin  himself  the  chief  ground  of  his  concep- 
tion of  descent  and  evolution,  viz.  the  theory  of 
natural  selection,  we  find  also  that,  while  it  is 
not  without  support  from  facts  in  the  course  of 
Nature,  the  range  of  these  facts  is  much  narrower 
than  that  of  the  theory  of  evolution.  How 
simply  the  protective  colour  of  many  animals  that 
take  the  colour  of  their  surroundings  is  explained 
by  the  theory  of  natural  selection ;  how  simply 
also  the  striking  features  of  many  blossoms 
in  form,  colour,  and  smell,  by  which  they  attract 
insects  and  make  possible,  by  crossing,  the  more 
favourable  fructifying  of  plants  for  reproduction ! 
How  simply  does  this  theory  explain  the  grace- 
ful mimicry  i.e.  the  protective  resemblance  of 
certain  kinds  of  animals  in  form  and  colour  to 
branches  and  leaves  of  the  plants  on  which  they 
feed,  or   to    kindred  animals  among   whom    they 


112         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

live,  which  cannot  be  eaten  by  other  animals  and 
therefore  are  exposed  to  no  peril ! 

Moreover  many  differences  in  kindred  species, 
connected  with  the  position  and  climate  of  their 
habitat,  may  be  explained  by  natural  selection. 
Yet  here  too  it  must  combine  with,  even  when 
it  has  not  to  succumb  to  Lamarck's  theory  of 
the  adjustment  of  organs  by  their  use  or  dis- 
use, unless  Weismann's  hazardous  theory  of  the 
non-hereditability  of  acquired  qualities  is  to  be 
accounted  correct. 

These  limits  perhaps  exhaust  the  applicability 
of  the  principle  of  natural  selection.  The  lines  of 
progress  in  the  organic  world,  which  are  not  to 
be  explained  alone  by  natural  selection,  are  much 
vaster  and  of  greater  import.  There  are,  com- 
paratively speaking,  very  numerous  and  systematic 
characteristics  of  species  and  of  some  of  the  higher 
orders,  which  are  of  no  use  whatever  to  the 
individual  member.  These  cannot  possibly  have 
been  summoned  into  existence  by  selection  alone. 
Other  lines  of  progress  in  organisation  are  again 
of  the  greatest  use  to  individuals,  but  not  until 
they  attain  a  highly  developed  and  effective  stage, 
e.g.  the  extremities  of  the  vertebrates,  which,  in 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  113 

their  first  and  small  beginnings  could  only  hinder 
the  individual.  Finally  the  free  cross-breeding  of 
individuals  must  always  have  continued  to  hinder 
the  further  development  of  species,  especially  as 
they  reproduced  themselves  in  diverging  direc- 
tions. 

Hence,  soon  after  the  appearance  of  Darwin, 
criticism  became  more  and  more  persistent  in 
declaring  natural  selection  to  be  inadequate  for 
solving  the  origin  of  species.  The  most  important 
of  these  critiques  is  that  of  K.  E.  von  Baer's 
treatise  on  Darwin's  teaching  in  his  Studies  in 
the  Sphere  of  Natural  Science  (St.  Petersburg, 
Schmitzdorff,  1876),  together  with  three  volumes 
by  Albert  Wigand,  Darwinism  and  the  Scientific  Re- 
searches of  Newton  and  Cuvier  (Brunswick,  Vieweg, 
1874,  1875,  1877). 

At  first,  however,  the  inadequacy  of  the  theory 

of  natural   selection    led    to   modifications  which 

were  intended   not    so   much  to  supplement  the 

operation  of  selection  by  means  of  other  agencies 

as   to    heighten    its    significance.      Thus,    Moriz 

Wagner  (1813-87)  advanced  the  theory  of  Isolation 

by  Migration  and  applied  it  especially  to  the  origin 

of  man.     The  Englishmen,  Romanes  and  Gulick, 

8 


114         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

tried  to  develop  this  theory  further,  founding  on 
their  observation  of  many  peculiar  species  to  be 
discovered  in  far-off  islands.  It  was  especially 
Gulick  who  discovered,  by  his  observations  on  one 
of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  variations  in  the  repro- 
duction of  snails  found  there,  and  based  upon  that 
his  theory  of  physiological  selection.  He  set  this 
as  a  new  factor  by  the  side  of  the  previously 
discovered  factors  of  natural  selection  combined  with 
isolation. 

It  was  soon  found  that  Darwin's  theory  of 
natural  selection,  and  Lamarck's  theory  of  the 
continuous  evolution  of  organisms  by  the  use 
or  disuse  of  organs,  in  adaptation  to  their  environ- 
ment, were  to  a  certain  extent  contradictory. 
Like  his  contemporary,  Herbert  Spencer,  Darwin 
had  innocently  accepted  the  operation  of  both 
principles.  August  Weismann,  on  the  other  hand, 
denied  the  capacity  of  transmitting  inherited 
qualities,  and  thus  rejected  the  explanation  of 
Lamarck.  Hence  arose  the  group  of  Neo-Dar- 
winians,  who,  more  Darwinian  than  Darwin  him- 
self, explain  natural  selection  as  the  exclusive 
principle  of  the  reproduction  of  species,  and  also 
the  group  of   Neo-Lamarckians,  who,  while   ad- 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  115 

mitting  a  co-operation  of  natural  selection,  find 
the  causes  of  the  higher  evolution  of  organisms 
in  Lamarck's  rather  than  in  Darwin's  principles. 
v  At  the  head  of  the  Neo-Darwinians  stands 
August  Weismann.  As  the  theory  of  selection 
between  mature  individuals  does  not  explain  the 
progress  of  a  species,  he  transfers  the  power  of 
selection  to  the  germ,  attributing  this  selection 
to  the  quantitative  differences  in  the  nourishment 
of  the  germinal  particles — which  are  well-organised 
life-bearers  or  Biophora,  and  which  he  designates 
Determinants,  because  they  determine  the  develop- 
ment of  the  organs.  He  calls  this,  germinal  selec- 
tion ;  then  he  proceeds  to  postulate  a  personal 
selection  among  the  varying  individuals  that  have 
thus  arisen.  By  the  united  co-operation  of  the 
original  germinal  selection  and  the  personal  selec- 
tion which  follows  it,  the  evolution  of  the  organic 
world  on  an  ascending  scale  is  held  to  be  possible. 
In  spite  of  all  the  practical  knowledge  and  acute- 
ness  of  the  originator  of  the  germinal  selection 
theory,  it  is  very  doubtful,  however,  if  a  hypothesis 
so  elaborate — the  basis  of  which,  namely,  germinal 
selection,  rests  on  hypotheses  which  ever  evade 
observation,  and   the   dominant  aim  of  which  is 


116         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

the   elimination    of    purposive    causes — has   any 
fruitful  future  for  science. 

As  an  eminent  supporter  of  the  Neo-Lamarck- 
ians,  we  may  name  the  Viennese  botanist  Richard 
von  Wettstein.  In  his  lecture  at  the  Carlsbad  Na- 
tural Science  Congress  (26th  Sept.,  1902)  on  Neo- 
Lamarckism  and  its  Relation  to  Darwinism  (Jena, 
Fischer,  1902),  he  upheld  the  idea  that  it  was 
quite  impossible  to  explain  the  formation  of  all 
new  forms  in  one  and  the  same  manner,  and  that 
therefore  both  the  Lamarckian  and  the  Darwinian 
attempts  at  explanation  had  equal  justification. 
But  for  the  explanation  of  the  gradual  rise  in 
organisation,  the  Darwinian  principle  of  selection 
seemed  to  him  insufficient.  What  was  required  was 
the  direct  adaptation-of  organisms  to  their  environ- 
ment, as  is  taught  in  Lamarckism.  What  is 
perhaps  the  most  important  stage  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  vegetable  world,  the  transition  of  the 
"  algae"  to  the  fern  and  shave-grass,  developing 
through  moss,  becomes  intelligible  to  us  only 
when  we  accept  the  gradual  adaptation  to  land-life 
of  plants  adopted  for  water,  during  this  stage  of 
evolution.  Thus  it  is  that  modern  research  into 
the  lower  stages  of  the  pre-adamite  vegetable  world 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  117 

makes  a  transition  of  plants  from  water  to  dry 
land  probable,  while,  as  we  saw  above,  scientists 
are  to  be  found  to-day  who  are  inclined  to  think 
that  in  the  case  of  mammals  there  must  have 
been  in  earlier  times  a  transition  of  the  more 
highly  developed  animals  from  dry  land  to  water. 
Thus  everywhere  we  encounter  speculation — no- 
where do  we  set  foot  on  certainty. 

Finally,  in  our  account  of  Darwin's  teaching, 
we  come  to  the  fundamental  point  of  his  theory 
of  selection,  to  the  fact  that  all  individuals  of  a 
species  vary,  to  what  is  called  individual  variability. 

Here  we  see  ourselves  confronted  with  the 
question  whether  this  variability  is  to  be  regarded 
as  accidental  and  aimless,  or  as  in  part  definitely 
determined. 

Darwin  himself,  at  the  conclusion  of  his  work 
on  the  Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants ,  expressed 
himself  as  inclined  to  regard  this  variability  as 
aimless,  but  concluded  his  argument  with  the 
following  words:  "On  the  other  hand  an  Omni- 
potent and  Omniscient  Creator  orders  and  fore-sees 
everything.  This  brings  us  face  to  face  with  a 
difficulty  just  as  insoluble  as  that  of  Free-will  or 
Predestination." 


118        RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Of  course  all  those  scientists  to  whom  the 
special  value  of  Darwin's  teaching  lies  in  his 
elimination  of  the  operation  of  determining  causes 
from  the  universe,  are  in  favour  of  the  theory  of 
an  aimless  variability.  Similarly  all  those  scientists 
who  admit  the  operation  of  purposive  causality 
in  nature,  advocate  a  variability  which  is  deter- 
minate and  in  accord  with  an  upward  development 
of  life.  K.  E.  von  Baer  deserves  special  mention 
as  an  upholder  of  the  theory  of  tendency  and 
purpose  in  the  organic  world.  Moreover  the 
botanist  Nägeli  (1817-91)  assumes  a  definitely 
determined  power  of  variation,  which,  according 
to  a  definite  standard,  is  striving  after  fulfilment. 
Therefore,  in  contrast  to  the  Selection  theory,  he 
calls  his  theory  that  of  Direct  Production,  and 
finds  the  inner  causes  for  this  definitely  directed 
variability  in  the  molecular  forces  immanent  in 
the  particular  substance. 

Among  the  present-day  supporters  of  a  de- 
finitely determined  variation,  we  must  first  of  all 
mention  the  botanist  Reinke  of  Kiel,  whose  epoch- 
making  book,  The  World  as  Reality,  appeared  in 
1899  (Berlin,  Paetel).  Just  as  twenty  or  thirty 
years   ago    Wiegand's   book    on    Darwinism    was 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  119 

the  first  great,  compact,  and  successful  attack  on 
Darwin's  Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  the  influence 
of  which  was  then  greatly  over-estimated,  so  to- 
day Reinke's  work  stands  out  as  a  turning-point, 
which  again  paves  the  way  for  a  frank  recognition 
by  Natural  Science  of  operative  teleological  forces, 
and  opposes  that  attempt  to  eliminate  the  spiritual 
element  from  Nature,  which  as  The  Mechanical 
Conception  of  the  Universe  still  holds  sway  over 
so  many  minds.  Reinke  starts  with  the  com- 
parison of  an  organism  to  a  machine.  In  a 
machine,  those  physical  and  chemical  energies 
which  operate  in  matter,  only  achieve  the  pur- 
pose which  the  machine  has  to  serve  when  they 
are  controlled  and  guided  by  an  intelligent  power 
Similarly  a  living  organism  is  only  adapted  to 
its  ends  by  its  physical  and  chemical  energies 
being  under  the  control  and  direction  of  an 
intelligent  power.  These  intelligent  energies  in 
organisms  he  calls  :  "  Dominants  ".  On  page  452 
ff.  he  says  :  "I  distinguish  in  Nature  intelligent 
forces  as  the  ruling,  and  energetic  forces  as  the 
subordinate,  agencies.  The  world  consists  of 
1  Energies  '  and  '  Dominants  '.  Physics  is  con- 
cerned   solely   with    '  energies,'    Physiology   with 


120         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

'energies'  and  'dominants,'  Mental  science  only 
with  '  dominants  '  and  what  they  produce.  In  the 
union  of  '  dominants  '  with  '  energies,'  we  discover 
a  spiritual  element  in  Nature.  My  scientific  creed 
culminates  in  this  conception."  On  page  440,  he 
observes :  "  Plants  and  animals  are  organised 
according  to  the  circumstances  in  which  they 
are  situated,  and  herein  we  must  recognise  intel- 
ligence. Hence  I  have  explained  that  intelligence 
in  the  sense  of  a  Universal  Reason  must  be  the 
cause  of  organic  adaptation." 

A  further  and  important  symptom  of  the  revolu- 
tion now  proceeding  in  the  conceptions  of  the 
universe  held  by  scientists,  is  to  be  found  in 
a  lecture  delivered  by  the  Munich  zoologist, 
Dr.  August  Pauly,  on  the  15th  of  March,  1902  ; 
the  subject  is  Truth  and  Falsehood  in  Darwin's 
Teaching  (Munich,  Reinhardt,  1902).  He  starts 
with  the  idea  that  the  causal  feature,  on  which 
Darwin's  Theory  of  Selection  is  built,  cannot  ac- 
count for  adaptability,  and  yet  adaptability  is 
the  character  of  all  organic  productions  in  three 
ways :  (1)  in  physiological  functions,  (2)  in  the 
anatomical  structure  of  organisms,  and  (3)  in  the 
actions    of  animals  and  men.     Now  adaptability 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  121 

attains  its  end  only  by  means  of  discrimination, 
that  is,  by  means  of  intellect.  It  is  only  a  dis- 
criminating principle  that  can,  in  a  definite  set  of 
circumstances,  solve  any  problem.  In  the  principle 
of  discrimination, — as  opposed  to  accident,  which 
cannot  accomplish  anything  and  yet  ex  hypothesi 
has  to  accomplish  everything — we  have  a  potency 
that  seems  adequate  to  every  emergency,  if  only 
we  can  succeed  in  proving  its  sway  in  the  two 
spheres  that  are  withdrawn  for  the  most  part  from 
the  immediate  influence  of  our  intellect,  viz.  in 
the  physiological  functions  and  in  the  anatomical 
construction  of  organisms.  Pauly  now  tries  to 
lead  this  proof,  choosing  certain  crucial  examples  : 
e.g.,  especially  the  act  of  seeing  in  the  physiological 
department,  and,  in  the  anatomical  structure  of 
organisms,  the  marvellously  designed  "  tectology  " 
of  the  Fibro-spongice,  as  illustrated  by  Meyer  and 
Culmann.  The  delicate  fibres  that  fill  up  the 
interstices  of  their  bony  structure  are  not  irregu- 
larly thrown  together,  but  are  adapted  to  pull  and 
pressure  with  a  perfection  such  as  human  technique 
cannot  in  the  remotest  degree  attain  in  its  build- 
ing operations.  The  result  is  that  the  skeleton  is 
made  as  lightly  and  firmly  as  possible,  and  indeed 


122         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

with  a  homogeneity  of  structure  which  cannot  be 
acquired  by  natural  selection ;  it  shows  a  direct 
and  original  purpose  in  the  structure.  The  logical 
sequence  of  thought  leads  us  still  further  to  recog- 
nise a  discriminating  activity,  that  is  a  psycho- 
logical or  psycho-physical  principle,  not  only  in  the 
functions  and  anatomy  of  organisms,  but  also  in 
a  sphere  outside  the  organic,  viz.  in  the  inorganic, 
since  in  atoms  and  molecules  perception  and  dis- 
crimination could  not  arise  unless  the  former  had 
in  themselves  the  previous  conditions  necessary 
for  such.  Hence  Pauly  closes  with  these  words  : 
"  Darwin's  answer  to  the  question  concerning  the 
origin  of  adaptability  made  the  order  of  the  universe 
a  plaything  of  chance  ;  an  analysis  of  the  principle 
of  discrimination  will  refer  it  to  a  progressive 
order  of  physics,  in  which  the  laws  of  psychology 
clash  with  those  of  reason.  That  is  the  picture 
we  have  of  our  future  philosophy." 

It  is  highly  gratifying  to  see  that  scientists 
ike  Reinke  and  Pauly,  enriched  with  the  results 
of  the  most  recent  researches  in  the  sphere 
of  biology,  turn  back,  for  all  their  increased 
knowledge,  to  recognise  so  emphatically  a  teleo- 
logical    principle   working   in    Nature. '   For   this, 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  123 

Karl    E.    von    Baer    had    paved    the    way.     He 
had  already  in  1834  (Addresses  and  Essays,  vol.  i., 
p.  71,  St.  Petersburg,  1864),  spoken  his  mind  on 
the  subject.     "  The  earth,''  said  he,  "  is  only  the 
seed-bed  on  which  the  mental  inheritance  of  man 
shoots  and  spreads,  and  the  history  of  Nature  is 
only  the  history  of  the  continuous  victory  of  mind 
over  matter.     This  is  the  root  idea  of  creation,  for 
the  pleasure,  nay,  for  the  furtherance  of  which  she 
causes  individuals  and  generations  to  vanish,  and 
raises  the  present  upon  the  scaffolding  of  an  im- 
measurable past."     Thirty-two  years  later,  in  his 
treatise  :  "  On  Design  in  the  Processes  of  Nature  " 
(Addresses,   etc.,  vol.    ii.,   p.    105,    St.   Petersburg, 
1873),  he  professes  exactly  the  same  views,  and 
again  ten  years  later  in  his  treatise :   "  On  Ten- 
dency and  Purpose,  especially  in  Organic  Bodies  " 
(Addresses,  vol.  ii.,  pages  228  f.),  he  sums  up  his 
view   of  tendency   and    purpose    in    Nature  with 
these  words:    ''Harmony  in   Nature,  i.e.,  regular 
and  reciprocal  relationship  in  Nature,  is  explained 
according  to  our  view  by  its  aims  and  by  its  laws 
considered    as   means   to   the    attainment    of  the 
same.      To  pursue   an    object,    aim,    or   purpose, 
and  to  select  the  adequate  means,  this  we  call 


124         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

reason.  ...  If  this  application  of  the  word 
'  reason  '  is  correct,  we  must  finally  affirm  either 
that  all  Nature  works  reasonably,  or  that  she  is 
the  emanation  of  Reason,  or — if  we  think  of  the 
original  basis  of  all  activity  as  bound  up  with 
our  own  Nature — that  all  Nature  is  reasonable." 
We  have  now  come  to  the  end  of  our  survey  of 
the  history  of  the  Darwinian  theories,  only  to  find 
ourselves  confronted  by  the  fact — which  is  certainly 
unparalleled  in  the  history  of  science — that  a 
scientist  and  discoverer  led  his  fellow-scientists 
on  to  a  perfectly  new  track,  where  they  willingly 
followed  him,  but  that  the  firmest  foundation 
which  he  thought  he  had  found  for  this  new  track, 
has  proved  itself  inadequate.  It  is  Darwin's  lasting 
merit  to  have  helped  to  bring  to  light  the  idea  of 
an  origin  of  the  higher  species  by  descent  from 
closely  related  lower  species,  and  to  have  made 
this  the  starting-point  for  all  research  within  this 
sphere.  On  the  other  hand  the  theory  with  which 
Darwin  tried  to  explain,  primarily,  the  evolution 
of  the  lower  species  into  higher,  viz.,  the  theory  of 
natural  selection,  plays  only  a  subordinate  part,  in 
the  judgment  of  most  men  of  science — with  the 
exception  of  the  Neo-Darwinians — and  is  unable 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  125 

to  explain  what  is  most  significant  in  the  ap- 
pearance of  new  and  more  highly  developed  species 
and  forms.  "  Furthermore,  the  question  whether  a 
gradual  evolution  or  a  spasmodic  progress  called 
the  higher  species  into  existence,  is  still  an  open 
one,  and  the  probabilities  are  that  both  methods 
operate  in  turn.  But  as  for  the  causes  of  each 
new  advance,  whether  an  entirely  new  species  was 
brought  into  being  from  time  to  time,  or  whether 
only  capacities  already  in  use  but  hitherto  un- 
employed were  recovered,  and,  if  so,  by  what 
impulse  they  were  recovered — all  this  lies  still 
veiled  for  us  in  impenetrable  darkness. 

IV.  The  Appearance  of  Man 

We  have  already  had  repeated  occasion  to  show 
that  the  possibility,  and  in  fact  the  probability, 
bordering  upon  certainty,  of  an  animal  descent 
for  humanity,  has  to  be  considered  purely  as  a 
matter  of  inference.  But  for  us  the  question  is 
of  such  importance  that  we  shall  treat  it  in  a 
special  section. 

It  is  a  question  which  has  naturally  stirred 
people's  minds  in  the  deepest  possible  manner 
ever   since  the  first  attempts  were  made  to  ap- 


126         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

proach  the  history  of  creation  from  the  side  of 
science.  But  hitherto  the  questions  have  out- 
numbered the  answers.  Neither  concerning  the 
bodily  and  mental  character  of  the  first  men,  nor 
concerning  their  descent,  nor  concerning  the  age 
of  the  human  family  or  their  original  home,  have 
we  any  reliable  information ;  all  we  have  is  more 
or  less  well-founded  conjecture. 

That  man  as  regards  his  physical  nature  is 
related  to  the  animal  world  and  represents  the 
uppermost  and  highest  stage  in  the  order  of 
mammals,  and  that  even  the  life  of  the  human  soul 
has  its  preparatory  stage  in  the  soul  of  animals, 
is  a  fact  which  has  long  been  recognised.  But 
since  men  began,  on  Darwin's  initiative,  to  ex- 
plain the  relationships  of  organisms  by  descent 
of  the  one  from  the  other,  the  question  of  a  de- 
scent of  mankind  from  the  animal  world  has 
pushed  its  way  into  scientific  discussion.  Very 
many  reasons  have  been  found  for  thinking  such 
a  descent  probable. 

We  have  already,  on  page  98,  referred  to  the 
fact  that  one  cannot  avoid  the  supposition  that 
the  first  individuals  of  higher  species  came  into 
existence  not  in  fully  developed  form  but  through 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  127 

an  embryonic  development,  and  that  these  em- 
bryos cannot  have  had  their  protecting  and 
nourishing  mantle  except  in  the  womb  of  one  of 
the  most  nearly  related  of  the  lower  species. 
Moreover  the  embryonic  evolution  of  the  present- 
day  human  individual  is  very  closely  related  to 
the  embryonic  evolution  of  the  higher  mammals. 
Further  the  numerous  rudimentary  organs  in  man 
are  organs  which  in  the  higher  animal  world  to- 
day are  still  active.  The  manifold  resemblance  of 
the  human  body  to  the  body  of  the  more  highly 
developed  apes — which  on  account  of  this  re- 
semblance are  called  anthropoid,  i.e.  apes  re- 
sembling man — has  rendered  it  probable  that 
man  has  a  parent  common  with  these ;  whilst 
the  great  difference  between  them  makes  it  again 
probable  that  he  is  no  direct  descendant  from  one 
of  these  anthropoids,  but  comes  from  a  common 
parent  from  which  the  anthropoid  apes  have 
branched  off  as  a  lower  offspring  on  the  animal 
plane,  whereas  man  has  progressed  in  a  higher 
evolution,  bearing  within  him  the  self-conscious 
mental  life. 

There    are   in    existence   to-day   four   kinds   of 
anthropoid  apes. 


128         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Two  are  to  be  found  in  Asia,  the  gibbon,  and 
the  orang-utan  (not  as  one  often  sees  it  written 
"  orang-utang  "  orang-utan  means  "  woodman  "  ; 
"  orang-utang "  would  mean  something  different 
and  absurd) ;  two  in  Africa,  the  gorilla  and 
the  chimpanzee ;  none  in  the  New  World.  The 
gorilla,  in  spite  of  his  comparatively  short  arms, 
is  the  furthest  from  man,  the  chimpanzee  the 
nearest. 

Professor  Branco,  of  Berlin,  on  whose  authority 
I  make  these  statements,  has  discussed  the  ques- 
tion of  the  descent  of  man  with  special  thorough- 
ness in  his  treatise  on  the  teeth  found  in  the 
Swabian  pea-ore,  which  resemble  human  teeth 
(The  Annual  Journal  of  the  National  Scientific 
Society,  Würtemberg,  pp.  1-144,  1898),  together 
with  his  Hohenheim  programme  on  the  teeth  of 
mammals,  which  has  also  appeared  as  a  special 
work  (Schweizerbart,  Stuttgart,  1898).  The  bodily 
difference  between  man  and  the  ape  is  seen  not  only 
in  the  greater  capacity  and  more  numerous  con- 
volutions of  the  human  brain,  and  in  the  shape  of 
the  skull,  but  especially  in  the  formation  of  the 
extremities.  The  ape  is  a  four-handed  creature, 
man  a  two-handed.      The  skeleton  of  the  human 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  129 

foot  is  so  different  from  the  skeleton  of  the  hand 
on  the  hinder  extremity  of  the  ape  that  it  is  im- 
possible for  the  hand  to  have  evolved  into  a  foot ; 
we  must  presuppose  another  origin  for  the  upright 
human  gait,  together  with  the  free  use  of  both 
hands.  K.  E.  von  Baer  has  laid  special  stress  on 
this  in  his  treatise  on  Darwin's  theory. 

Similarly  with  the  mental  life  of  Man  compared 
with  that  of  the  animals,  especially  with  that  of 
the  higher  animals ;  there  is  no  lack  of  an  ex- 
tensive relationship,  but  the  difference  is  still 
more  serious. 

The  mental  life  of  animals,  especially  of  the 
higher  animals,  has  an  exceptional  amount  in 
common  with  that  of  man.  Not  only  are  the 
sensations  of  appetite  and  aversion  and  the  im- 
pulses of  desire  and  avoidance  common  to  both, 
but  animals  possess  also,  in  a  high  degree,  memory, 
understanding,  and  reflection.  Moreover  the  qua- 
lities and  emotions  that  demand  ethical  treatment, 
are  frequently  common  to  both  men  and  animals ; 
we  have  merely  to  mention  on  the  one  hand  de- 
pendence and  love,  gentleness,  sociability  and 
readiness  to  help,  and  on  the  other,  envy,  hate,  un- 
sociableness,  anger  and  fear.     These  and  similar 


130         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

qualities  of  the  soul,  good  as  well  as  bad,  are  often 
so  distributed  in  the  animal  world  that  each  of 
them  has  its  special  characteristic  reproduced  in 
an  animal,  and  it  is  from  the  observation  of  this 
that  the  animal  fables  and  the  animal  epic  of  Rey- 
nard the  Fox  have  arisen. 

So  great  is  the  relationship  between  the  mental 
life  of  man  and  animals  that  even  what  separates 
man  from  animals,  viz.,  his  self-conscious  and 
freely  determining  spirit,  rests  upon  a  certain  con- 
dition and  basis  in  the  very  inner  life  common  to 
the  animals  and  man.  Rudolf  Otto  in  his  valu- 
able book,  Naturalistic  and  Religious  Views  of  the 
World  (p.  260;  Tübingen,  Mohr,  1904),  calls  this 
inner  life  the  raw  material  of  the  spirit.  He  says 
(p.  259) :  "  Psychical  capacities  are  in  themselves 
simply  raw  products.  In  the  possibility  of  raising 
them  to  the  level  of  mind,  and  of  turning  the  raw- 
product  to  its  proper  use,  lies  the  absolute  differ- 
ence and  impassable  gulf  between  man  and 
animal." 

This  far-reaching  relationship  between  the  mind 
of  man  and  that  of  the  animals  has  become  a  criti- 
cal matter  for  scientific  research.  Most  naturalists 
pass  by  with   astonishing  ease  what   specifically 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  131 

separates  the  life  of  the  human  spirit  from  the 
animal  and  first  makes  man,  man ;  yet  this  new 
phenomenon,  which  emerges  first  with  the  appear- 
ance of  man,  strikes  the  eye  of  the  ordinary 
observer  as  clearly  as  the  eye  of  the  naturalist. 
This  new  phenomenon  is,  according  to  its  essential 
form,  the  appearance  of  self-consciousness  as  dis- 
tinguished from  mere  consciousness,  and  the 
appearance  of  free  self-determination  as  distinct 
from  mere  arbitrariness ;  according  to  its  con- 
tent, for  which  its  form  is  only  the  vessel,  this 
new  phenomenon  in  the  case  of  the  human  indi- 
vidual is  the  personality  with  all  its  varied  life  of 
the  soul  and  spirit,  rising  even  to  prayer  and  to 
communion  with  God.  In  the  case  of  humanity 
as  a  whole,  it  represents  the  entire  history  of  the 
world  and  human  progress.  As  Otto  says,  very 
truly  (p.  260) :  "  Different  as  is  the  psychical 
equipment  in  the  various  stages  of  animal  exist- 
ence, yet  common  to  it  everywhere  is  its  depend- 
ence on  what  is  given  it  by  Nature.  An  animal 
species  may  be  a  million  years  old.  Yet  it  has 
no  history.  It  is  and  it  remains  the  same  product 
of  Nature,  it  is  devoid  of  history."  This  new  phe- 
nomenon appears  in  every  single  human  individual 


132         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

in  a  perfectly  gradual  evolution,  in  the  course  of 
transitions,  hardly  or  absolutely  unnoticeable,  from 
the  impregnated  single-celled  egg  in  the  womb  up 
to  the  awakening  of  self-consciousness  in  the  grow- 
ing child.  And  it  is  also  probable  that  the  human 
race  itself  has  come  into  existence  by  such  a 
gradual  evolution.  But  while  this  evolution  may 
have  gone  on  through  such  long  periods  of  time, 
nevertheless  man  has  become  what  he  is  by  the 
awakening  of  self-consciousness  and  free  self-de- 
termination. Those  beings  in  whom  self- conscious- 
ness and  consciousness  of  free  self-determination 
first  awoke,  were  the  first  of  mankind  to  exist ; 
the  existences  preceding  them  were  only  the 
initial  stages  of  mankind.  With  Primitive  Man, 
something  specifically  new  came  into  being,  some- 
thing indeed  which  was  not  only  new  but  of  a 
higher  order,  a  perfectly  new  and  incomparably 
superior  world  of  being.  It  was  a  form  of  exist- 
ence, as  new  and  superior  to  what  had  preceded 
it,  as,  at  an  earlier  stage,  had  been  the  first 
appearance  of  the  organic  in  the  sphere  of  the 
inorganic,  of  the  living  among  the  extinct,  of  the 
conscious  among  the  unconscious.  The  elements 
of  that  inorganic  world  had  to  be  so  constituted 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  133 

that  they  could  provide  soil  for  the  appearance 
of  the  organic,  i.e.  of  the  animal  and  vegetable 
world,  and  this  explains  all  the  vain  attempts, 
which  we  have  already  outlined,  to  deduce  the 
organic  from  the  inorganic,  the  living  from  the 
dead.  Similarly,  the  living  and  organic,  in  the 
animal  world,  had  so  to  be  constituted  that  man- 
kind might  come  into  existence  in  that  sphere, 
and  from  this  indisputable  fact  we  can  under- 
stand the  equally  vain  attempts  to  explain  the 
origin  of  man  from  the  animal  world. 

We  find  in  the  writings  of  most  scientists  who 
have  occupied  themselves  with  the  relationship  of 
animals  and  men,  that  what  is  specifically  human 
is  handled  with  exceptional  carelessness.  Dar- 
win has  written  a  work  on  the  Descent  of  man, 
but  the  origin  of  self -consciousness,  individuality,  ab- 
straction, general  conceptions,  etc.,  he  dismisses  in  a 
single  page  (German  edition,  vol.  i.,  p.  52  ff.).  The 
moral  feeling  he  treats  in  greater  detail,  devoting 
the  whole  of  the  third  chapter  to  it.  He  de- 
duces it  from  the  social  instincts  connected  with 
a  highly  developed  intelligence,  and  says  in  his 
concluding  chapter  that  the  fact  that  man  is  the 
only  being  whom  one  can  with  certainty  name  as 


134         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

moral,  forms  the  greatest  of  all  differences  be- 
tween men  and  animals.  But  in  that  highly  de- 
veloped intelligence  which  lifts  the  moral  feeling 
up  to  responsible  self-determination,  we  have  finally 
to  recognise  self-consciousness  as  an  indispensable 
condition,  and  we  have  the  right  to  demand  a 
further  explanation  of  the  origin  of  self-conscious- 
ness. 

Häckel  expounds  in  his  writings,  in  much  more 
detail,  the  life  of  the  soul.  In  his  Riddle  of  the 
Universe,  the  psychological  part,  or  discussion  on 
the  life  of  the  soul,  occupies  the  whole  of  the 
fourth  part  of  the  work  ;  but  we  look  in  vain  for 
any  recognition  or  even  for  any  description  of 
the  difference  between  the  souls  of  men  and  of 
animals.  This  is  inevitable,  for  he  denies  the 
distinction,  recognising  it  only  as  quantitative  not 
qualitative.  Everything  specifically  human  he  finds 
in  the  soul-life  of  the  animals  as  well.  Thus  on 
page  144  (Eng.  Tr.,  p.  44)  he  says,  "the  higher 
vertebrates,  especially  those  mammals  most  nearly 
related  to  man,  have  just  as  good  a  title  to  'reason' 
as  man  himself,  and  within  the  animal  world  we 
can  also  trace  a  long  series  of  steps  in  the  gradual 
evolution  of  reason  just  as  we  can  with  man  ". 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  135 

Moreover  the  great  problem  of  the  freedom  of  will 
is  solved  once  for  all  by  him  and  solved  negatively. 
"There  is  no  free-will,"  says  Häckel.  He  does 
not  seem  to  distinguish  in  the  least  between  con- 
sciousness and  self-consciousness  :  at  any  rate,  at  the 
point  where  he  discusses  the  idea  of  conscious- 
ness (p.  198,  Eng.  Tr.,  p.  61),  he  breaks  conscious- 
ness up  into  two  main  divisions,  world-consciousness 
and  self -consciousness ,  and  moreover,  e.g.  (p.  214, 
Eng.  Tr.,  p.  66),  in  the  ontogeny  of  consciousness, 
he  makes  consciousness  and  self-consciousness 
one  and  the  same  thing.  In  his  latest  work  The 
Wonders  of  Life  (Kröner,  Stuttgart,  1904)  we  still 
find  him  supporting  the  same  position.  In  his 
Riddle  of  the  Universe  (p.  357,  Eng.  Tr.,  p.  71  f.) 
he  called  the  life  of  the  spirit  a  portion  of  the 
physiology  of  the  brain.  In  The  Wonders  of  Life 
he  says  (p.  98,  Eng.  Tr.,  p.  36  f.),  "  Biology  (taken 
in  its  widest  sense  !)  is  only  a  special  branch  of 
zoology,  to  which  on  account  of  its  exceptional 
significance  we  assign  a  special  place.  Accord- 
ingly, all  sciences  that  have  to  do  with  man  and 
the  activities  of  his  soul,  especially  the  so-called 
mental  sciences,  are,  if  we  follow  the  higher 
monistic    standpoint,    to    be    considered    special 


136         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

branches  of  zoology,  and  consequently  to  be 
classed  among  the  natural  sciences ".  He  con- 
tinues (p.  380) :  "  The  human  spirit  is  a  function 
of  the  phronema  " — the  phronema  being  the  think- 
ing organ  in  the  brain,  the  grey  substance  of 
the  brain-cortex. 

Happily  there  has  been  no  lack,  on  the  side  of 
scientists,  of  stout  opposition  to  this  monism, 
which,  everywhere  in  Nature  and  especially  in 
the  sphere  of  psychology,  confounds  the  condi- 
tion and  ground  of  the  higher  life  with  its  origin, 
and  thereby  lowers  the  worth  of  the  higher  forms 
which  thus  come  into  existence. 

One  writer,  who  takes  an  equally  eminent  posi- 
tion as  scientist  and  philosopher,  the  physiologist 
and  psychologist  Wilhelm  Wundt  of  Leipzig  (born 
1832),  is  a  truly  typical  example  of  this  healthy  and 
in  fact  highly  necessary  reaction  on  the  part  of 
science.  In  the  year  1863  he  published  through 
Leopold  Voss  in  Leipzig  some  lectures  on  the  soul 
of  animals  and  human  beings,  in  which  he  still  ad- 
hered to  this  standpoint  of  psychological  monism, 
and  boasted  (on  p.  8  of  this  lecture)  that  the  Law  of 
the  Conservation  of  Energy  in  the  domain  of  psych- 
ology was  expounded  there  for  the  first  time. 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  137 

By  doing  so  he  contradicted  tacitly  the  first 
discoverer  of  this  law,  Robert  Mayer.  The  latter, 
in  his  Innsbruck  Lecture  on  the  necessary  infer- 
ences to  be  drawn  from  the  mechanics  of  heat, 
expressly  excluded  the  psychological  domain  from 
this  law  of  the  conservation  of  energy,  declaring 
it  to  be  a  vulgar  error,  if  one  sought  to  identify 
two  activities  which  run  parallel  with  each  other, 
viz.,  the  brain-activity  and  the  mental  functions 
of  the  individual. 

In  a  second  edition  twenty-nine  years  later, 
Wundt  (1892)  declares  the  standpoint  of  the  first 
edition  to  be  a  sin  of  his  youth  which  weighed 
upon  him  like  a  debt  till  he  atoned  for  it  by  this 
second  revised  edition.  Here  he  takes  up  the 
entire  standpoint  of  "psycho-physical  parallel- 
ism," defending  the  higher  and  autonomous  value 
of  mental  life  and  mental  evolution,  as  indepen- 
dent of  all  physical  processes  of  the  brain. 

The  most  thorough  studies  of  the  relation  be- 
tween the  human  soul  and  that  of  animals  may 
be  found  in  the  two  works,  already  mentioned, 
by  the  Englishman  Romanes,  which  I  have  before 
me  in  a  German  translation,  viz.  Mental  Develop- 
ment in  the  Animal  Kingdom  (authorised  German 


138         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

edition,  Leipzig,   Ernst   Günther,   1883)  and  The 
Mental  Development  of  Man  (same  publisher,  1893). 

If  we  ask  finally  what  information  geology  and 
palaeontology  give  us  concerning  the  age  of  the 
human  family  and  the  character  of  its  oldest  re- 
mains, we  are  indeed  not  without  guiding  stars 
to  lighten  our  darkness,  but  we  are  very  far  from 
possessing  absolute  knowledge  on  the  question. 

That  man  came  into  existence  in  the  geological 
Tertiary  Period,  as  many  geologists  think  they 
have  already  discovered,  is  indeed  probable,  but  up 
till  now  it  has  not  been  proved  as  an  indisputable 
fact.  Yet  in  any  case,  in  the  Diluvial  Period, 
which  followed  immediately  on  the  Tertiary 
Period,  we  come  upon  very  numerous  and  quite 
indisputable  traces  of  human  existence  in  Europe, 
and  thereby  the  age  of  the  human  family  is  put 
back  many  thousands  of  years  more  than  the 
four  thousand  years  before  Christ,  which  the  Bible 
narratives  assign  it. 

The  Diluvial  Period  must  have  lasted  a  very 
long  time — a  fact  proved  by  the  traces  of  exten- 
sive glacialisation  on  the  northern  portion  of  the 
earth,  which  scientists  have  lately  been  obliged  to 
take   as  four  periods  with  three  intervals.     The 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  139 

latest  presentation  of  this  has  been  given  us  by 
Moritz  Homes  in  his  work  Diluvial  Man  in  Europe 
(Friedr.  Vieweg  &  Son,  Brunswick).  Each  of 
these  three  intervals  has  not  only  left  numerous 
traces  of  a  wealth  of  "  mammalia  "  but  also  in- 
disputable traces  of  human  existence  in  the  form 
of  remains  of  skeletons  and  countless  numbers  of 
human  implements  made  of  stones  or  bones  and 
other  materials,  so  that  one  can  speak  even  of 
a  development  of  European  civilisation  in  these 
intervals.  All  three  intervals,  to  judge  from  the 
material  from  which  these  implements  are  made, 
belong  to  the  older  Stone  Age.  The  later  Stone 
Age,  as  well  as  the  Bronze  and  Iron  Ages,  are 
of  subsequent  date. 

The  first  of  these  intervals  is  the  time  of  the 
flourishing  of  the  cave-bear.  It  had  still  a  com- 
paratively warm  climate — as  is  shown  by  the 
appearance  of  the  thin  -  skinned  elephants  and 
rhinoceri  in  distinction  to  the  shaggy  fauna  of 
the  second  intervening  Glacial  Age.  From  this 
period  we  have  great  rough-hewn  almond-shaped 
stone  implements,  and  again  little  darts  and 
tools,  on  which,  however,  no  trace  of  any  art 
has    yet   been   found  ;    we  have   also  the  highly 


140         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

important  human  skull  and  skeleton  remains, 
which  show  the  full  human  type  in  the  size 
and  shape  of  the  hollow  of  the  skull,  and,  in 
addition  to  that,  peculiarities  of  shape  that  re- 
mind one  of  characteristics  in  the  skeleton  of  the 
modern  anthropoid  ape.  The  most  famous  skele- 
ton remains  of  this  kind  are  the  skull  found  in 
the  Neanderthal  near  Düsseldorf  and  the  skeletons 
from  Krapina  near  Agram  in  Croatia.  The  marks 
that  recall  the  skull  of  the  anthropoid  apes  are 
decided  protuberances  above  the  eye-brows  and  a 
large  protuberance  at  the  back  of  the  head.  This 
is  most  marked  in  the  skull  found  in  the  Neander- 
thal. Virchow  was  inclined  to  take  this  skull  as 
a  diseased  formation,  as  the  skull  of  a  man  who 
had  had  rachitis  in  his  youth  and  gout  in  his 
old  age ;  but  after  a  number  of  analogous  skulls 
were  found,  this  opinion  was  given  up.  In  the 
case  of  the  muscular  appendages  of  the  skull 
from  Krapina,  Klaatsch  proved  that  the  capacity 
for  mastication  possessed  by  the  men  of  that 
period  was,  in  comparison  to  their  capacity  of 
speech,  rather  more  developed  than  that  of  human 
beings  at  the  present  day.  The  second  interven- 
ing Glacial  Period  had  a  colder  climate  than  the 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  141 

first,  as  is  shown  by  the  appearance  of  the  hairy 
mammoth  with  its  thick  shaggy  skin,  and  the 
shaggy  rhinoceros.  It  is  the  hey-day  of  the 
mammoth,  and  of  the  wild  horse  which  some- 
what resembled  the  horse  of  to-day.  While  the 
human  remains  of  this  period,  among  which  those 
belonging  to  Spy  and  Engis  in  Belgium  ought  to 
be  named,  remind  us  somewhat  less  of  those  lower 
forms,  yet  the  implements  of  this  period  are  dis- 
tinguished by  drawings  and  cuttings  in  bone  and 
ivory,  and  also  by  really  striking  drawings  of 
animals  on  the  walls  of  the  caves.  Finally,  in 
the  third  and  colder  intervening  Glacial  Period, 
the  typical  Reindeer  Age,  the  outline  drawings 
on  bones,  especially  on  antlers  of  the  reindeer, 
and  the  artistic  carvings,  attain  a  yet  higher  pitch 
of  excellence,  while  the  human  skulls  of  this  period, 
called  by  the  French  "  the  race  of  Cro  Magnon," 
are  in  no  way  inferior  to  the  skulls  of  human 
beings  of  to-day. 

Up  till  now  there  have  been  no  indisputable 
forms  discovered  bridging  animals  and  men.  The 
famous  pithecanthropus  erectus,  which  the  Dutch 
doctor  Dubois  discovered  in  September,  1897,  on 
the  island   of  Java,    in   a  superpliocene    or   sub- 


]42         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

quaternary  stratum,  that  is  on  the  upper  boundary 
of  the  tertiary  formations,  is  indeed  held  by  some 
scientists  to  be  a  form  between  man  and  the  an- 
thropoid ape,  but  the  majority  of  other  scientists 
disagree.  Nor  is  it  at  all  a  reliable  witness,  as 
its  three  parts  were  found  at  distances  from  each 
other — which  does  not  exclude  the  possibility  that 
they  belonged  to  different  individuals.  The  frag- 
ments were,  one  skeleton  of  an  upper  thigh,  two 
cheek-teeth,  and  a  skull.  The  skeleton  of  the 
upper  thigh  belonged  to  a  being  of  upright  gait. 
The  cheek-teeth  remind  one  partly  of  the  teeth 
of  the  anthropoid  ape  and  partly  of  human  teeth. 
The  skull  very  closely  resembles  the  gibbon's 
skull,  an  anthropoid  ape  that  still  exists  in  Java ; 
but  it  is  much  larger,  as  large  in  fact  as  a 
human  skull.  Consequently,  as  has  been  said 
above,  some  scientists  who  have  examined  it  con- 
sider it  a  midway  form  between  ape  and  man. 
Others  think  it  the  skull  of  a  human  being;  but 
the  majority  regard  it  as  the  skull  of  a  gibbon, 
which  shows  by  its  size  that  there  also,  as  in 
many  regions  of  the  earth  throughout  the  fauna 
of  the  Tertiary  and  Diluvial  Ages,  there  were 
forerunners  of  present   day  mammals  which   de- 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  143 

cidedly  surpassed  in  size  the  corresponding  modern 
inhabitants  of  the  same  region. 

Thus  it  remains  an  open  question  for  us  as  to 
when  and  with  what  powers  the  human  race  first 
came  into  existence.  And  the  question  as  to  what 
part  of  the  earth  was  their  first  home,  is  still 
further  from  a  decision.  Häckel  falls  back  on  a 
hypothetical  submerged  continent  in  the  Indian 
Ocean  connected  with  Asia  and  Africa,  which, 
following  the  Englishman  Slater,  he  calls  Lemuria. 
But  all  this  is  nothing  else  than  an  ingenious 
hypothesis,  which  must  still  wait  for  confirmation 
or  contradiction. 

V.  What  is  the  Attitude  of  the  Christian 
Religion  to  Biological  and  Anthropo- 
logical Research  ? 

If  we  now  pass  to  the  question,  What  is  the 
attitude  of  Christianity  to  the  natural  history  of 
Creation  ? — which  we  have  hitherto  treated  in 
outline — we  find  this  question  already  answered 
in  the  sphere  of  astronomy,  cosmic  physics,  and 
chemistry,  and  answered  peacefully  as  regards 
science  and  religion.  But  in  the  sphere  of  biology 
and  anthropology  the  contradictions  that  emerge 


144         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

between  the  scientific  and  religious  interests  touch 
one  another  at  a  far  greater  number  of  points,  and 
often  in  really  sharp  fashion,  so  that  it  seems 
better  to  describe  first,  in  this  sphere,  the  results 
and  the  present-day  position  of  scientific  research, 
and  then  to  devote  a  special  section  to  the  ques- 
tion of  their  attitude  with  regard  to  Christianity. 

As  matters  now  stand,  in  consequence  of  recent 
progress  in  natural  science,  a  number  of  views 
which  hitherto  seemed  to  belong  to  the  province 
of  the  Christian  view  of  the  world,  have  been 
seriously  shifted. 

In  the  first  place  we  note  the  theory  of  the  age 
of  the  earth  and  of  its  inhabitants,  i.e.  the  human  race. 
The  results  of  science  are  here  opposed  to  the 
real  or  alleged  words  of  the  Bible.  These  in- 
controvertible results  attribute  to  the  existence  of 
the  earth,  to  the  existence  of  animal  and  plant 
life,  and  especially  to  the  existence  of  the  human 
race,  a  very  much  greater  age  than  is  to  be  found 
in  Holy  Scripture.  It  is  indeed  impossible  in 
face  of  these  results  of  science  to  maintain  the 
opposite  utterances  of  the  Bible.  But  the  abandon- 
ment of  this  standpoint,  which  could  only  be  up- 
held in  any  case  on  the  ground  of  the  untenable 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  145 

assumption  of  a  literal  inspiration  of  Holy  Scrip- 
ture, is  for  Christianity  no  loss.  It  is  a  gain.  For 
this  abandonment  limits  the  character  of  the  reve- 
lation of  Holy  Scripture  to  what  is  valuable  for  the 
religious  feeling,  and  especially  to  what  relates  to 
our  redemption  through  Christ,  a  limitation  which 
preserves  us  in  turn  from  a  collision  between  Faith 
and  Science,  which  would  be  unbearable  and  could 
only  end  in  certain  disaster  to  Faith.  Our  mind 
cannot  endure  any  double  book-keeping,  accord- 
ing to  which  something  could  be  at  once  scientifi- 
cally true  and  religiously  false,  or  vice  versa.  Only 
through  the  unity  of  truth  does  our  religious  as 
well  as  our  scientific  conscience  find  harmony  and 
\/  peace. 

Moreover,  a  probability,  almost  amounting  to 
truth,  points  to  the  fact  that  the  higher  species  of 
organic  existences,  including  man,  have  come  into 
being  by  descent  from  the  lower  species.  If  this 
probability  were  raised  to  the  stage  of  certainty, 
a  stage  which  it  has  already  attained  to-day  in 
the  minds  of  the  majority  of  scientists,  one  would 
simply  have  to  say  of  this  knowledge  what  one 
has  to  say  of  every  forward  step  in  our  knowledge 

of  Nature,  viz.  that  it  yields  us  only  a  new  and 

10 


146         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

deeper  view  of  the  manner  and  method  of  the 
Divine  Creation,  a  view  which  would  be  no  hind- 
rance to,  but  rather  an  enrichment  of,  our  religious 
ideas. 

A  further  achievement  of  Natural  Science  is  the 
discovery  that  evolution  in  the  origin  of  organ- 
isms and  of  the  human  race  plays  a  role  hither- 
to undreamt  of.  It  is  indeed  the  case  that  there  is 
in  the  present  day  much  enthusiasm  and  mad 
ecstasy  over  the  idea  of  all  things  and  qualities 
originating  by  means  of  a  perfectly  gradual  evolu- 
tion, and,  so  far  as  science  is  thus  inclined  to 
lay  much  greater  stress  on  the  lower  from  which 
the  higher  was  evolved,  than  on  the  higher  which 
has  arisen  from  the  lower,  it  is  on  a  track  that 
leads  down  instead  of  up,  inasmuch  as  such  a 
method  rejects  religion  and  Christianity.  The 
theories  described  above  (p.  140  f.),  viz.,  that  the 
activities  of  the  human  spirit  are  identical  with 
the  movements  of  the  molecules  of  the  brain, 
theories  which  do  not  see  in  these  motions  only 
the  ground,  support,  and  instrument  of  activities 
of  the  brain — belong  to  this  inclined  plane  which 
slopes  downwards.  The  religious  aspect  of  the 
world  simply  cannot  accept  them.     Happily  they 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  147 

are  just  as  unacceptable  to  a  science  which  looks 
deeper — as  we  showed  above  in  the  case  of 
the  protest  which  no  less  a  person  than  Robert 
Mayer,  the  first  discoverer  of  the  Conservation 
of  Energy,  raised  against  "the  vulgar  error"  of 
identifying  the  activities  of  the  brain  with  the 
mental  functions  of  the  individual. 

But  eccentricities  and  erroneous  theories  cannot 
hinder  us  from  recognising  the  fact  that  evolution 
in  the  origin  of  things  really  plays  a  part  which 
formerly  had  not  been  suspected.  Now  we  might 
refuse  to  raise  or  answer  the  question  as  to  how 
Christianity  is  related  to  the  theory  of  an  origin  of 
things  and  of  existence  itself  by  means  of  a  per- 
fectly gradual  evolution,  on  the  plea  that  this 
theory  of  the  origin  of  species  and  of  man  has  only 
the  character  of  a  more  or  less  probable  hypothesis, 
that  it  must  probably  share  its  supremacy  with 
the  theory  of  sudden  new  formations  which  spas- 
modically appear,  and  that  it  seems  precipitate  to 
estimate  the  religious  value  of  mere  hypotheses. 
But  such  a  refusal  would  not  be  wise.  It  might 
arouse  the  suspicion  that  it  was  the  interest 
of  religion  to  combat  generally  the  theory  .  of 
evolution.     Now,  while  the  theory  of  evolution, 


148         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

as    far    as    regards   either   the   origin    of  genera 
and    species,    or    purely    prehuman    occurrences 
which   are   withdrawn    from    immediate    observa- 
tion,  is  indeed    a  mere   hypothesis,   with   regard 
to  the  origin  of  plant,   animal,   and  human  life, 
it   is  no  hypothesis;   it  rests  on  a  fact  which  is 
repeated  a  thousandfold  before  our  eyes,  and  com- 
pels us  to  take  a  more  friendly  attitude  than  sev- 
eral are  inclined  to  take,  even  towards  what  was 
till  now  a  mere  hypothesis.     This  is  the  fact,  viz. 
that  every  single  human  individual,  like  all  pluro- 
cellular  individuals  in  the   animal  and  vegetable 
kingdom,  comes  into  being  by  perfectly  gradual 
evolution.     Even   the   coming   of  the    Redeemer 
is   not  an   exception   to   this  rule.     The   human 
individual  begins  his  existence  after  generation  as 
an   impregnated   single-celled   egg.     This   is   de- 
veloped in  the  uterus  by  perfectly  gradual  transi- 
tions until   it   is   ripe   for    birth.     Moreover   this 
moment    of  ripeness   is   not    an   absolutely   fixed 
one  ;  there  are  premature  births  and  delayed  births 
without  fatal  results.     Then  the  growth  and  the 
evolution  of  the  newly-born  also  constitute  a  pro- 
cess of  perfectly  gradual  evolution.     We  know  the 
new  qualities  of  the  child  who  has  developed  to 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  149 

the  full  growth  of  a  man,  once  these  new  qualities 
are  there,  but  seldom  or  never  can  we  put  our 
finger  on  the  precise  moment  when  they  came  into 
existence  :  they  came  by  a  gradual  evolution.  It 
does  not  occur  to  us  to  judge  the  worth  of  a  human 
individual  according  to  what  it  was  in  an  earlier 
stage  of  its  evolution ;  we  estimate  its  value  by 
what  it  has  become.  Individuals  have  their  own 
worth,  and  their  qualities  and  achievements  are 
of  value,  whether  they  appear  suddenly  or  gradu- 
ally. In  face  of  this  fact,  that  all  human  indi- 
viduals come  into  existence  by  evolution,  we  must 
also  reckon  with  the  possibility  that  the  human 
race  itself  arose  by  gradual  evolution,  nor  have 
we  any  right  to  check  the  search  for  fresh  light 
in  this  direction.  Whether  the  new  life  that 
came  into  existence  by  this  presumed  method  of 
gradual  evolution,  came  from  existing  germinal 
conditions  whose  operation  was  dormant  till  then, 
and  then  was  released  through  new  physical 
combinations  unknown  to  us,  or  whether  the  new 
factor  appeared  each  time  as  a  fresh  impetus  from 
the  invisible  world  to  the  visible,  is  certainly  a 
question  still  unsolved.  Probably  it  will  remain 
insoluble.      But   its   solution   is    unimportant    to 


150         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

religion.  For,  on  the  religious  view,  everything 
that  happens  is  so  entirely  under  Divine  Guidance 
that  it  is  all  the  same  whether  God  already 
put  into  the  beginning  of  all  things  the  potenti- 
ality of  what  they  were  to  become,  or  whether 
He  put  the  new  thing  each  time  afresh  into  His 
World  by  a  new  start.  Moreover,  the  further 
probability  that  the  upward  evolution  took  place 
partly  in  quite  gradual,  and  well-nigh  impercept- 
ible transitions,  and  partly  in  sudden,  spasmodic, 
and  upward  transitions,  in  no  way  conflicts  with 
our  religious  consciousness. 

We  meet  with  a  similar  uncertainty  in  the  work 
of  those  scientists  who  refer  all  that  comes  into 
being  to  the  beginnings  and  original  elements  of 
all  existence,  by  maintaining  that  the  very  atoms 
are  animate.  This  idea  suffers  from  being  intrinsi- 
cally obscure.  If  it  simply  denotes  their  capacity 
of  furnishing  the  material  condition  and  ground 
for  animate  existences  with  their  psychical  and 
mental  functions,  it  is  not  only  harmless  for  religion 
but  indeed  a  postulate  for  any  scheme  of  thought 
which  aims  at  a  uniform  view  of  the  universe.  But 
one  must  not  forget  that  the  idea  of  an  animate 
atom  has    only   a   somewhat   remote    connection 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  151 

with  what  we   understand,  from  our  own  know- 
ledge of  the  soul  and  soul-life,  as  animate  being. 
The  idea  of  the  animation  of  atoms  will  in  this 
event  be  essentially  limited;  we  can   merely  at- 
tribute to  them  a  multifarious  energy  which  in- 
volves attracting  and  repelling  powers  of  a  very 
definite  character.     For  only  atoms,  so  equipped, 
can  furnish  a  bodily  foundation  for  soul-life.     But 
of  conscious  or  self-conscious  perception,  thought,  or 
will,  we  cannot  as  yet  speak.     On  the  other  hand, 
if  the  assertion  that  the  atoms  are  animate,  means 
that  the  whole  soul-life  of  the  animal  world  arose 
from  them  by  purely  causal  evolution,  and  that 
from  this  again   by  purely  causal  evolution  the 
whole  mental  life  of  humanity  evolved,  then  this 
idea  of  animation  has  a  far-reaching  significance, 
which,  as  we  have  said  above,  we  cannot  accept. 
It  goes  far  beyond  the  limitation  described  above. 
And  in  so  doing  it  brings  only  confusion  instead 
of  clearness.     For  thus  what  was  strictly  an  hy- 
pothesis regarding  the  final  problems  of  the  uni- 
verse,  and   an   hypothesis  conscious  of  its   own 
limitations,   is   transmogrified  into   an   unbridled 
flight  of  fancy.     And  as  such  it  cannot  but  be 
denied  by  the  religious  interest. 


152         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

The    supposition    of   the    animation    of    atoms 
was,  according  to  Lange  (History  of  Materialism, 
second  ed.,  vol.  i.,  p.  313),  first  advanced  by  the 
Frenchman  Robinet  in  his  Book  of  Nature  (1761). 
But    the   idea   met   with   little   consideration   for 
a  century,  until  in  recent  times  it  began  to  play 
a  role  in  philosophic  speculation.      This  supposi- 
tion, especially  when  advanced  in  the  far-reaching 
sense  which  we  reject  as  fantastic,  is  the  neces- 
sary  consequence   of  a   modern  and  widespread 
pantheistic  view,  called  by  Häckel  monistic,  which 
forbids  any  idea  of  aim  or  purpose  in  the  world. 
Such  a  monistic  view  substitutes,  for  a  teleologi- 
cal  evolution  of  the  world  with  definite  aim,  a 
purely  causal  one,  which  by  the  exclusive  action 
of  cause  and  effect  attains  to  what  turns  out,  after 
it  has  come  to  pass,  to  be  fitted  for  some  end,  al- 
though this  was  never  willed  at  all.    The  unswerv- 
ing adherence  to  law,  by  which  the  forces  of  the 
world  work,  must  compel  our  minds,  we  are  told, 
to  accept  this  "  elimination  of  teleology,"  as  one 
often  hears  people  say,  and  to  accept,  by  way  of 
compensation,  the  exclusive  reign  of  causality.     In 
spite  of  the  authority  of   Spinoza,  to   whom,   so 
far  as  I  know,  this  thought,  already  culled  from 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  153 

Empedocles,  owes  its  full  equipment,  I  venture 
to  say  that  I  do  not  understand  how,  within 
the  range  of  human  life,  the  unalterable  do- 
minion of  the  laws  of  Nature,  which  operate  of 
necessity,  can  be  held  to  compel  us  to  reject  the 
operation  of  teleological  causes,  i.e.  the  establish- 
ment and  attainment  of  aims  in  the  universe. 
For  man  indeed  acts  entirely  ideologically,  and 
his  teleological  actions  are  not  only  in  absolute 
harmony  with  that  causal  necessity,  with  which  the 
powers  of  Nature  work,  but  presuppose  Nature's 
unalterable  necessity  and  subjection  to  law.  Man 
sets  up  his  own  aims  and  attains  them  by  the 
materials  and  energies  of  Nature,  not  in  spite  of  the 
necessity  and  subjection  to  law  with  which  these 
powers  work,  but  by  means  of  this  very  necessity 
and  subjection  to  law.  He  can  use  the  materials 
and  powers  of  Nature  for  the  attainment  of  his 
purpose  and  aim,  only  because  he  is  acquainted 
with  them,  because  he  understands  the  laws  of 
their  working,  because  he  knows  that  these  work 
by  unalterable  necessity,  and  because  he  can  sus- 
pend their  operation,  or  cause  them  to  cease  at 
his  pleasure. 

This  is  especially  true  of  what  man  constructs, 


154         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

from  the  simplest  lever  used  by  a  stone-breaker, 
or  the   simplest    spade  and  wheel-barrow  of  the 
peasant,   up   to  wireless  telegraphy   and   all   the 
astonishing  achievements  in  every  sphere  of  mod- 
ern technique,  whereby  forces  of  Nature,  which 
operate   of  sheer  necessity,    are   employed,   with 
truly  colossal  results,  in  the  service  of  human  aims. 
An  attractive  presentation  of  this  thought  is  to 
be  found  in  an  English  book,  The  Reign  of  Law, 
which  was  written  in  the  year  1866  by  the  late 
Duke  of  Argyll.     It  went  through  many  editions 
and  was  much  read,  especially  in  America.    In  his 
subsequent  works,   The   Unity  of  Nature  and  The 
Philosophy  of  Belief,  he  delights  to  recapitulate  the 
same  theme. 

Now  a  view  which  denies  the  operation  of  any 
teleological  forces  in  the  world  is  at  most  compat- 
ible with  a  pantheistic  belief,  and  with  one  of  ex- 
tremely attenuated  proportions ;  but  it  is  in  direct 
contradiction  to  a  deistic  and  much  more  to  a 
theistic  view  of  the  world,  and  of  course  also  to 
Christianity.  Furthermore  it  contains  difficulties, 
compared  with  which  the  most  difficult  problems 
of  the  Christian  view  are  mere  trifles. 

The  inorganic  world  is  set  in  such  a  wonder- 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  155 

ful  harmony   of   all   the   materials   and   energies 
of  the   universe,  that   it    is  impossible   to   think 
of  it  apart  from  a  determining  Intelligence  and 
Almighty  Power,  unless  one  soothes  oneself  with 
the  thought  already  expressed  by  the  Greek  philo- 
sopher Empedocles  (490-430   b.c.),  and  repeated 
by  Lange  in  his  History  of  Materialism,  that  what 
is  fitted  to  a  purpose  must  be  present  in  prepon- 
derance, because  its  essence  is  to  maintain  itself 
when  what  is  not  fitted  to  a  purpose  has  long 
since  passed   away.      That   the    heavenly  bodies 
move  exactly  as  they  do,  that  matter  in  the  uni- 
verse is  just  as  it  is,  that  the  air,  water,  and  earth 
of  our  planet  possess  that  constitution  in  virtue  of 
which  they  are  able  to  form  the  basis  of  organic 
life  culminating  in  man  endowed  with  mind  and 
soul,  but   that  all   this,  instead  of  being  willed, 
has  only  become   so  without   a  determining  will, 
without    any  all-ruling  Intelligence  or  Almighty 
power— this  surely  is  an  insuperable  difficulty  to 

the  mind. 

And  this  difficulty  becomes  still  more  formidable 
when  we  take  into  consideration  the  organic  world, 
and  especially  man  with  his  mental  life  of  purpose 
and    aim.      That    the    plants    and    animals    are 


156         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

organisms  composed  with  exceptional  fitness  for 
their  own  ends,  and  that  man  is  the  highest  of 
all  organisms  on  earth,  has  long  been  generally 
known ;  but  the  palaeontological  discoveries  of 
the  last  century  have  changed  this  rather  ideal 
knowledge  into  a  very  practical  one.  They  have 
proved  that  this  lofty  position  of  man  has  a 
previous  history  extending  over  innumerable  mil- 
lenniums, during  which  organic  life  arose  on  the 
earth  with  simple  beginnings  and  unfolded  it- 
self in  ever  higher  and  higher  organisms,  till 
the  appearance  of  man  with  his  wealth  of 
mental  and  psychical  life.  Now  to  suppose  that 
this  gradual  ascent  with  its  progressive  mastery 
and  occupation  of  matter  by  the  mental  and 
psychical,  until  the  final  emergence  of  the  mental 
in  man,  is  not  something  planned  and  willed  by 
a  higher  intelligence,  but  only  something  that  has 
simply  happened  through  the  category  of  cause 
and  effect ;  to  suppose  that  while  intelligent,  self- 
conscious,  and  responsible  beings  such  as  men 
are,  should  exist  on  earth,  the  last  and  supreme 
cause  of  all  existence,  even  of  the  existence  of 
man,  should  lack  all  the  very  attributes  which 
are  highest  in  man  and  stamp  man  as  the  head 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  157 

of  creation  on  the  earth,  viz.  the  attributes  of 
self-consciousness,  intelligence,  will  and  love — 
to  suppose  this,  I  say,  involves  insuperable  diffi- 
culties. David  Frederick  Strauss  in  his  Old  and 
New  Faith  has  given  a  truly  classical  expression  to 
this  difficulty  when  he  says  (second  ed.,  p.  143) : 
"The  world  is  for  us  no  longer  founded  by  the 
Highest  Reason  but  founded  on  the  highest  reason. 
Certainly  we  must  add  to  the  cause  what  lies  in 
the  effect ;  what  comes  out  must  certainly  have 
also  been  within.  But  it  is  only  the  limitation, 
of  our  human  intelligence  that  causes  us  to  draw 
these  distinctions;  the  universe  is  indeed  cause 
and  effect,  outward  and  inward,  at  one  and  the 
same  time." 

Now,  according  to  this  view  of  the  world,  which 
rejects  any  purposive  energy,  what  is  the  course 
of  the  world  ?  Until  a  few  centuries  ago  there 
was  only  one  answer  given  to  this  question. 
"The  world  revolves,  from  everlasting  to  ever- 
lasting." On  this  view,  human  individuals  were 
simply  annihilated  when  they  had  finished  their 
course  on  earth.  Moreover  mankind  was  to  be 
simply  annihilated  without  leaving  a  single  trace, 
when    the    earth    collided   with    the   sun.      New 


158         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

creations  come  and  pass,  and  the  world  goes 
on  in  ceaseless  revolution.  But  recently  this 
idea  has  been  challenged  by  another :  viz.  that 
the  course  of  the  universe  tends  finally  to  an 
entropy,  i.e.,  an  equable  diffusion  of  the  energy  of 
heat  through  the  universe,  whereby  that  energy 
would  become  inoperative,  and  all  life  would 
cease. 

It  is  patent  that  both  these  ideas  of  the  course 
of  Nature  do  little  to  satisfy  our  intelligence,  still 
less  our  needs  of  the  soul  and  the  demands  of  our 
religion.  It  is  therefore  no  wonder  that  pessim- 
ism holds  sway  over  so  many  minds,  harking  back 
partly  to  the  pessimist  Schopenhauer  (1788-1860), 
and  in  part  finding  new  expression  in  a  thinker 
so  keen  and  so  well  versed  in  natural  science  as 
Eduard  von  Hartmann.  No  one  can  demonstrate 
better  than  he  the  operation  of  teleological  ener- 
gies, that  is  to  say,  of  energies  that  make  for  an 
end,  but  the  view  which  he  arrives  at  makes  the 
world  come  into  existence  by  a  mischance  and  pass 
again  into  nothingness.  The  unconscious,  bright 
world-substance,  under  the  mysterious  constraint 
of  its  equally  unconscious  will,  has  at  one  time 
committed  the  error  of  creating  a  world,  and  now, 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  159 

with  the  instinct  of  an  unconscious  teleology,  it 
leads  this  world  on  in  an  evolution  which  is  melan- 
choly and  yet,  relatively  speaking,  its  best  course, 
till,  grown  to  ripeness,  the  world  drops  once  more 
into  nothingness,  and  thereby  the  absolute  is  at 
rest.  Now  these  are  vast  difficulties  to  thought, 
compared  with  which  the  difficulties  of  a  Christian 
view  of  the  world  are  trifling. 

Passing  from  the  atheistic  or  pantheistic  view 
of  the  world  to  the  definitely  religious  view,  based 
on  a  Personal,  All-Powerful,  All-Wise,  and  Holy 
God,  who  created  the  world  and  is  leading  it  to 
a  goal  of  perfection,  we  have  first  to  state  the 
difference  between  the  deistic  and  theistic  concep- 
tion of  the  world  (cf.  pp.  2,  3). 

According  to  the  deistic  view,  which  arose  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  in  England, 
God  so  made  the  world  that  it  pursued  its  further 
course  according  to  purely  immanent  laws,  and 
no  longer  had  any  need  of  special  Divine  Guid- 
ance. God  remains  transcendent  over  against  the 
world  after  the  creation,  though  the  fact  of  a  moral 
order  of  the  world,  the  demands  of  the  moral  law, 
and  the  wonderful  disposition  of  the  world,  remind 
man   of   His   Existence,  demanding  wonder  and 


160         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

worship.  This  view  has  never  been  generally 
accepted,  but  it  is  still  a  standpoint  with  which 
many  are  content.  That  it  is  insufficient  for  the 
Christian  view  is  clear,  inasmuch  as  personal 
communion  with  a  Personal  and  accessible  God 
is  the  vital  breath  of  the  Christian's  life. 

The  theistic  view,  which  originated  on  the  soil 
of  Judaism,  sees  in  God  the  transcendent  Creator 
of  the  world,  Who  remains  always  immanent  in 
His  world  and  by  His  Personal  Omnipresence 
conducts  it  to  its  goal.  This  conception  is  at 
the  same  time  the  presupposition  of  Christianity. 
But  the  Christian  view  of  the  world  takes  a  still 
more  concrete  form.  In  the  Supreme  Intelligence, 
in  the  Almighty  Power,  and  in  the  Holy  God,  Who 
demands  holiness  from  His  reasonable  creatures, 
it  further  recognises  the  God  of  Love,  Who  in 
Jesus  Christ  His  Son  reconciles  sinful  man  to 
Himself,  giving  them  the  right  to  look  on  God  as 
their  Father  and  to  know  themselves  as  children 
of  God  who  may  live  in  eternal  communion  with 
Him  in  that  divine  kingdom  which  exists  both 
on  earth  and  in  heaven.  This  communion  by 
prayer  with  the  Heavenly  Father,  which  is  based 
on    Christ's   redemptive    work   and   Word,  forms 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  161 

for  the  Christian  a  coherent  sum  of  experiences, 
which  are  for  him,  at  least,  just  as  real  as  his 
experiences  of  the  world,  but  far  surpassing  the 
latter  in  worth.  They  soothe  and  satisfy  the 
deepest  longings  of  his  heart.  In  this  com- 
munion with  his  Heavenly  Father,  founded  upon 
Christ,  the  Christian  also  possesses  above  all  the 
pledge  of  eternal  life  for  himself,  and  of  the  final 
perfecting  of  mankind  in  the  kingdom  of  God. 
He  may  be,  and  may  remain,  much  in  the  dark 
as  to  how  this  perfecting  of  the  individual,  or  of  all 
humanity,  is  to  be  achieved ;  yet  the  fact  remains 
so  firm  that  he  can  close  his  eyes  peacefully  in 
death  and,  like  his  Saviour,  commit  his  spirit 
into  the  hands  of  his  Heavenly  Father. 

The  Christian  view  of  the  world  has,  like 
any  other,  its  intellectual  difficulties.  To  begin 
with,  it  does  not  get  above  those  limitations 
which  condition  all  human  thought  and  pertain 
to  the  various  views  of  the  world,  limitations, 
i.e.  which  prevent  us  from  thinking  of  space  and 
time  as  either  limited  or  unlimited.  Then,  the 
Christian  view  of  the  world  presents  special  diffi- 
culties, peculiar  to  itself.    That  the  Almighty  God, 

Who  is  Love,  created  a  world  in  which  sin  and 

11 


162         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

evil  play  so  great  a  part,  and  in  which,  above  all, 
the  relation  between  the  moral  conduct  of  man 
and  his  happiness  or  unhappiness  on  earth  often 
shows  such  glaring  discrepancies,  is  a  riddle  at 
which  humanity,  in  its  passion  for  God,  has 
laboured  from  the  time  of  the  composition  of  the 
Book  of  Job  and  of  the  Psalms  (xxxvii.  and  lxxiii.) 
down  to  the  present  day.  This  riddle  has  not  be- 
come easier  through  the  discoveries  of  Science  ;  it 
has  become  harder.  For  Science  has  discovered 
that  not  only  death  but  also  murder  reaches  back 
far  beyond  the  beginning  of  the  human  race,  that 
it  is  as  old  as  the  animal  world  itself,  and  that 
all  the  elemental  catastrophes  which  to-day  visit 
so  many  lives  and  often  bring  destruction  ac- 
companied by  the  greatest  torture,  are  as  old 
as  organic  life  on  earth.  Such  a  perception  of 
what  apparently  contradicts  reason  and  is  at  the 
same  time  cruel,  inflicts  a  sore  test  on  the 
belief  that  Almighty  God  is  Love.  Yet  this 
discord  is  not  more  perplexing  than  much  else 
that  is  perplexing  in  the  world ;  all  points  to  the 
fact  that  God  wishes  not  only  to  be  revealed  but  also 
to  be  hidden,  because  He  will  not  compel  recogni- 
tion of  Himself  by  indisputable   logical  and   mathe- 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  163 

matical  proofs,  desiring  rather  to  win  grateful 
love  and  free  devotion  from  men  who  have 
experienced  so  much  of  His  redeeming  Love  in 
their  own  lives  that,  for  all  the  apparent  con- 
tradictions of  reason,  contradictions  which  they 
are  not  able  to  solve,  they  refuse  to  mistrust  His 
Absolute  Goodness.  The  actual  experience  that 
there  is  for  us  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  and  that  all 
suffering,  whether  immediately  due  to  sin  or  not, 
has  an  educative  effect  on  a  pious  soul,  and  that 
it  is  the  struggle  against  evil  in  the  world  which 
summons  man  to  exert  all  his  noblest  powers 
and  to  unfold  all  his  social  virtues,  this  shows  us 
the  way  in  which  we  can  trustfully  hand  over  the 
solution  of  this  and  of  life's  other  problems  to 
the  Almighty  Power,  Wisdom,  and  Love  of  Our 
Heavenly  Father,  hoping  for  a  blessed  consumma- 
tion of  humanity  in  which  we  ourselves  shall  share. 
With  this  inward  hope  of  a  personal  eternal 
life,  we  next  confront  a  further  special  difficulty 
of  the  Christian  view  of  the  world.  For  this  hope 
must  face  the  fact  that  psychical  and  mental 
life  is  bound  up  on  earth  with  the  body  and  its 
organism,  and  that  this  body  dies  with  us.  This 
difficulty  may  be  met  from  two  sides.     One  is  the 


164        RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Christian  hope,  assured  by  Christ's  Resurrection, 
that  after  the  death  of  this  body  a  glorified  body  is 
bestowed  on  us,  in  which  sin,  death,  and  pain  are 
for  ever  overcome.  Whether  man  sleeps  between 
Death  and  the  Resurrection,  or  directly  after 
Death  enters  upon  the  Resurrection  in  a  con- 
scious, continuous,  heavenly,  and  embodied  state, 
may  be  left,  on  account  of  the  veil  that  hangs  be- 
tween this  world  and  the  next,  an  open  question 
— to  be  answered  perhaps,  rightly,  in  the  latter  way. 
The  second  ground  on  which  the  hope  of  eternal 
life  may  be  raised  to  a  certainty,  is  our  conception 
of  God.  God  is  not,  in  the  eye  of  the  Christian, 
what  Häckel  blasphemously  calls  a  gaseous  verte- 
brate, but  a  Spirit,  i.e.  He  has  not  the  limitations 
of  embodiment  and  yet  He  is  the  Supreme  In- 
telligence, the  Almighty  One,  the  Holy  One,  and 
— Love.  It  is  only  logical  for  our  minds  to 
attribute  to  such  an  Originator  and  Founder  of 
all  existence  the  power  to  give  eternal  life,  in  spite 
of  their  earthly  death,  to  men  whom  He  has  de- 
clared to  be  His  children.  "  God  is  not  a  God  of 
the  dead,  but  a  God  of  the  living"  says  Jesus 
(Matt.  xxii.  32,  Mark  xii.  27,  Luke  xx.  38). 

Our   idea  of   God  lifts  us  also  across  the  last 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  165 

and   greatest  of  the   difficulties  with   which   the 
Christian    view   of    the    world    finds    itself  con- 
fronted, viz.  the  difficulty  of  believing  that  God 
is    leading    the   world    to    a    goal    of  perfection. 
Never  does  man  feel  himself  smaller  than  when 
he  occupies  himself  with  this  thought :    "  What 
are    we,   compared    with    all    the    millions    and 
billions   of  heavenly   bodies   that   fill   space   and 
move  on  their  predestined  course  ?     A  mere  speck. 
What  do  we  know  of  all  the  beings  that  may 
dwell  in  these  heavenly  bodies  ?     Nothing,  abso- 
lutely nothing."     Yet  we  must    trust    Him  who 
created  the  world,  trust  that  He  has  some  purpose 
concerning  it,  and  that  He  can  lead  it  to  this  goal. 
At  this  juncture  also  we  must  repeat:  the  fact  of 
this  consummation  is  a  reality,  though  the  how  is 
hidden  from  our  view.     And  if  we  set  over  against 
this  thought  of  an  aim  for  the  world,  the  two  other 
thoughts  which  are  all  that  are  left  to  us  when  the 
idea  of  such  an  aim  is  denied,  viz.  the  thoughts  of 
an  endless  gyration  and  of  a  final  entropy  of  the 
world,  it  is  not  difficult  to  say  which  thought  is 
the  more  satisfactory. 

But  this  advantage  is  not  the  only  one  that  the 
Christian  view  of  the  world  has  over  others  ;  there 
are  others  that  go  hand  in  hand  with  it. 


166         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

Above  all  there  is  the  certainty  of  an  eternal 
communion  with  God  that  satisfies  the  human 
spirit,  and  even  guarantees  a  bliss  for  which 
none  of  the  other  views  can  make  any  amends. 

Then  the  Christian  view  of  the  world  alone  gives 
that  rest  and  restraint  which  we  need  in  our 
thoughts  concerning  the  further  evolution  of  or- 
ganisms on  earth.  The  discovery  that  the  different 
organisms  have  originated  along  a  steady  progress 
to  higher  and  higher  stages  of  evolution,  has  sug- 
gested to  naturalistic  theories  of  the  world  the 
idea  that  while  Man  has  represented  up  till  now 
the  highest  grade  of  organisms  on  earth,  there  is 
no  reason  for  supposing  it  impossible  that  yet 
higher  grades  of  existence  than  man  on  the  earth 
might  be  developed.  The  Christian  view  of  the 
world  rejects  this  thought  as  fantastic.  Accord- 
ing to  the  Christian  conception,  the  spiritualisation 
of  Nature,  the  continuous  evolution  of  organisms, 
the  elevation  of  animate  natural  existences  to 
existences  endowed  with  spirit, — this  has  reached 
its  summit  with  the  appearance  of  man  as  a 
self-conscious  being  capable  of  the  Idea  of  God, 
of  responsibility,  and  of  free-will.  Mankind,  which 
through    the  calamity  of  sin  had  got   out   of  its 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  167 

true  groove,  has  by  the  coming  and  the  redemp- 
tive work  of  Jesus  Christ  been  redeemed  from 
this  calamity  and  its  consequences,  and,  in  addi- 
tion to  the  temporary  and  passing  life  that  it 
has  to  lead  down  here,  has  been  endowed  with 
life  eternal  as  a  gift  of  God.  This  is  certainly 
a  mighty  and  pregnant  advance ;  it  is,  indeed, 
as  the  Bible  expresses  it,  a  New  Birth  and  a 
New  Creation,  but  it  is  a  further  development 
within  mankind  itself,  and  a  further  development 
which  has  started  with  the  coming  of  Christ  and 
the  acceptance  of  His  Redemption.  It  begins 
with  those  who  receive  the  Redemption  being 
received  into  the  Kingdom  of  God  as  children  of 
God,  finds  its  continuation  in  the  next  world,  and 
its  completion  in  the  New  Creation  of  Heaven 
and  Earth.  Anything  higher  than  being  a  child 
of  God  and  having  eternal  life  is  quite  unthinkable. 
Henry  Drummond  (1851-97),  the  Scotchman, 
expressed  very  attractively  this  conception  of 
Christianity  as  a  new  creation  on  the  basis  of 
mankind,  in  his  book,  Natural  Law  in  the  Spiritual 
World  (London,  Hodder  &  Stoughton,  1883).  It 
has  passed  through  many  editions  and  under  the 
title   Das  Naturgesetz  in  der  Geisteswelt  has  been 


168         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

translated  into  German  and  widely  circulated. 
Drummond  only  invites  criticism  here  and  there, 
as  e.g.  when  in  his  transference  of  natural  laws 
to  the  spiritual  world  he  follows  too  blindly 
the  problematical  ideas  of  Herbert  Spencer;  for 
example,  he  applies  too  naively  the  latter's  un- 
acceptable definition  of  the  idea  of  Life  (Life 
as  the  perpetual  adjustment  of  inner  relations 
to  outward  conditions).  But  on  the  whole  his 
book  is  full  of  fine  conceptions. 

When  I  glance  over  the  views  of  the  world 
already  described,  I  do  not  cherish  the  vain 
hope  that  my  portrayal  of  the  advantages  which 
the  Christian  view  of  the  world  possesses  over  its 
rivals  (advantages,  the  truth  of  which  I  am  per- 
fectly convinced  of)  can  win  over  to  the  Christian 
standpoint  any  reader  who  holds  to  another  view. 
For  each  view  has  its  difficulties ;  each  rests  far 
more  on  Faith  than  on  Knowledge.  It  was  not 
without  good  and  vital  reason  that  David  Friedrich 
Strauss  gave  his  book  the  title,  not  of  The  Old  Faith 
and  the  New  Knowledge  but  of  The  Old  and  the  New 
Faith.  Whether  one  closes  with  this  or  that  view 
of  the  world,  depends  on  the  bent  of  his  mind  and 
the  decision    of  his  will,  not  on  the  keenness  of 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  169 

his  logic  or  the  amount  of  his  knowledge.  But  I 
venture  in  all  modesty  to  cherish  another  hope. 
At  the  present  day,  there  is  no  lack  of  individuals 
who  have  been  laid  hold  of  by  the  liberating  and 
blessed  power  of  Christianity  and  gladly  admitted 
its  influence ;  on  whom,  however,  the  loud  and 
reiterated  cries  of  the  advocates  of  a  naturalistic 
view  of  the  world  make  some  impression,  sug- 
gesting that  to-day  a  Christian  view  of  the  world 
is  no  longer  compatible  with  culture  and  science. 
To  such  readers  I  hope  to  be  able  to  extend  a 
friendly  hand,  and  to  strengthen  them  in  the 
conviction  that  the  Christian  view  of  the  world 
can  at  every  point  cope  with  its  rivals,  and  in 
no  way  compels  its  adherents  to  abandon  culture  and 
science.  Especially  in  what  concerns  the  highest 
form  of  culture,  the  training  of  the  heart,  humble 
submission  to  a  Holy  and  Personal  God,  Who  is 
the  Creator  and  Ruler  of  the  world  and  at  the 
same  time  an  All-Pitying  Love,  is  a  more  effectual 
means  of  culture  than  a  Promethean  self-glorifi- 
cation. As  for  joy  in  Nature,  his  share  of  it  is 
greater  who  admires  in  Nature  the  work  of  a 
Creator,  and  enjoys  its  real  and  ideal  gifts  with 
gratefulness    to    the    Heavenly    Giver,    than    his 


170         RELIGION  AND  THE  SCIENTIFIC 

who  can  only  admire  in  it  a  universe  resting  on 
itself. 

I  venture  finally  to  express  a  further  hope.  If 
this  study  of  mine  is  read  by  some  who  take  their 
stand  with  perfect  confidence  on  the  Christian 
view  of  the  world,  but  who,  by  reason  of  the 
attacks  of  many  present-day  scientists  on  Christi- 
anity, have  themselves  begun  to  suspect  science,  I 
hope  to  have  persuaded  such  readers  that  views 
which  are  opposed  to  religion  imply  some  trans- 
gression of  the  limits  of  science,  and  pertain  no 
longer  to  the  sphere  of  science  but  to  the  sphere 
of  metaphysics  and  philosophy  ;  science  itself  is 
thoroughly  compatible  with  religion, — nay  more, 
the  results  of  science  actually  enrich  our  sense  of 
religion,  and  offer  to  the  religious  outlook  upon 
Nature  only  new  and  elevating  points  of  view. 
The  greater  the  number  is  of  those  who  combine  a 
thoroughly  Christian  conviction  with  an  open  eye 
for  Nature  and  the  researches  of  natural  science, 
the  fewer  will  become  the  voices  that  assert  the 
incompatibility  of  Christianity  with  culture  and 
science. 

It  is  an  exceptional  pleasure  to  me  to  see 
not    only   how    much    literature,    but    also    how 


RECORD  OF  CREATION  171 

much  valuable  literature,  is  nowadays  published 
on  the  question   of  the  relation  between  science 
and  Christianity,  not  merely  literature  occasioned 
by   such   attacks   on   the  Christian   view   of  the 
world   as  have   come   from  Häckel   and   recently 
from  Ladenburg  in  his  Cassel  lecture,  but  books 
arising   spontaneously.     It    would    be   impossible 
to  give  a  complete  list  of  these  publications,  nor 
would  this  lie  within  the  range   of  my  volume; 
yet    I    would    mention,    on    the    scientific    side, 
Reinke,  Pauly,  and  Dennert ;  on  the  philosophic 
side,  Eucken,  Paulsen,  Adickes,  Julius  Baumann, 
and  Portig  (The  Universal  Law  of  the  Applica- 
tion  of   Energy) ;    and   on   the   theological    side, 
Otto,  Braasch,  Loofs,  Reischle,   Kautzsch,  Adolf 
Müller,  Titius,  Kirn,  Zöckler,  and  Steude.     Roman 
Catholic  theologians  have  also   expressed   them- 
selves favourably  to   the   theory  of  descent    and 
evolution,  e.g.,  the  Jesuit  Erich  Wasmann  in  his 
book,  Modern  Biology  and  the  Theory  of  Evolution 
(Freiburg,  Herder,  second  ed.,  1904).     The  maga- 
zine Faith  and  Knowledge,  edited  by  Dennert,  and 
published  by  Kielmann  (Stuttgart),  is,  as  the  title 
indicates,    entirely   devoted    to    the    defence    and 
deepening  of  the  Christian  idea  of  the  world. 


CHAPTER  IV 

PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER,  AND  MIRACLES 

Faith  in  a  Divine  Providence,  in  answers  to  prayer, 
and  in  miracles,  is  indeed  an  inalienable  factor  in 
the  Christian  view  of  the  world.  We  shall  devote 
a  particular  section  to  this,  because  its  range 
borders  on  science  with  especial  closeness. 

i.  That  God's  Providence  rules  over  the  world 
down  to  its  very  smallest  details,  that  in  both 
the  small  and  the  great  requirements  of  life  God 
leads  men  like  a  Father,  especially  those  who 
know  themselves  to  be  children  of  God  through 
Christ,  and  that  He  gives  them  the  conscious  ex- 
perience of  this  Fatherly  guidance  in  their  earthly 
lot, — this  is  a  self-evident  factor  in  the  Christian 
view  of  the  world.  Jesus  Christ,  on  Whom  this 
view  is  founded,  Himself  lived  in  this  Faith  and 
proclaimed  it. 

The  whole  of  that  section  in  the  "  Sermon  on  the 

Mount  "  which  was  directed  against  the  anxious 

172 


PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER,  AND  MIRACLES     173 

spirit  of  care  (Matthew  vi.  25-34)  is  the  locus 
classicus  for  this  faith,  and  we  reproduce  as  it  stands : 
"  Therefore  I  say  unto  you :  Take  no  thought  for 
your  life,  what  ye  shall  eat  or  what  ye  shall  drink  ; 
nor  yet  for  your  body  what  ye  shall  put  on.  Is  not 
the  life  more  than  meat  and  the  body  than  rai- 
ment ?  Behold  the  fowls  of  the  air ;  for  they  sow 
not,  neither  do  they  reap,  nor  gather  into  barns;  yet 
your  Heavenly  Father  feedeth  them.  Are  ye  not 
much  better  than  they  ?  Which  of  you  by  taking 
thought  can  add  one  cubit  unto  his  stature  ?  And 
why  take  ye  thought  for  raiment  ?  Consider  the 
lilies  of  the  field,  how  they  grow  ;  they  toil  not, 
neither  do  they  spin  ;  And  yet  I  say  unto  you, 
That  even  Solomon  in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed 
like  one  of  these.  Wherefore  if  God  so  clothe  the 
grass  of  the  field  which  to-day  is  and  to-morrow 
is  cast  into  the  oven,  shall  He  not  much  more 
clothe  you,  O  ye  of  little  faith  ?  Wherefore  take 
no  thought  saying :  What  shall  we  eat  ?  or,  What 
shall  we  drink  ?  or,  Wherewithal  shall  we  be 
clothed  ?  (For  after  all  these  things  do  the  Gentiles 
seek  ;)  for  your  Heavenly  Father  knoweth  that  ye 
have  need  of  all  these  things.  But  seek  ye  first 
the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness  and 


174  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

all  these  things  shall  be  added  unto  you.     Take 
therefore    no   thought    for    the    morrow,    for    the 
morrow  shall  take  thought  for  the  things  of  itself. 
Sufficient  unto  the  day  is  the  evil  thereof."     The 
locus  classicus  for  the  conviction  that  God  attends 
at  all  times,  even  in  times  of  danger,  to  the  least 
wants   of   His   children,  is  in   Matthew  x.  29-31. 
It  runs  thus:  "Are  not  two  sparrows  sold  for  a 
farthing?  and  one  of  them  shall  not  fall  on  the 
ground  without  your  Father.     But  the  very  hairs 
of  your  head  are  all  numbered.    Fear  ye  not  there- 
fore, ye  are  of  more  value  than  many  sparrows." 
Nor   is   Jesus    disconcerted    by  the    mysteries   of 
Providence,   whether   they   are   unhappy   natural 
dispositions,  or  violent  deeds  of  men  inflicted  on 
comparatively  innocent  people,  or  destructive  ele- 
mental forces.     He  simply  draws  from  these  events 
wholesome  moral  and  religious  consequences,  re- 
jects uncharitable   inferences,  and   refrains   from 
mentioning  the    mysterious  background   that    re- 
mains.     He   quietly   leaves    the    solution    of  the 
mystery  to  His  Heavenly  Father.     Thus  He  says, 
in  John  ix.  1  ff.,  of  the  man  born  blind :  "  Neither 
did  this  man  sin,  nor  his  parents:   but  that  the 
works  of  God  should  be  made  manifest  in  him  ". 


AND  MIRACLES  175 

In  Luke  xiii.  1-5  He  says  of  the  Galileans  who 
had  been  killed  by  Pilate  during  their  sacrifices : 
"  Suppose  ye  that  these  Galileans  were  sinners 
above  all  the  Galileans,  because  they  suffered 
such  things?  I  tell  you,  Nay:  but,  except  ye 
repent  ye  shall  all  likewise  perish."  And  of  the 
eighteen  men  at  Jerusalem  who  lost  their  lives  by 
a  tower  falling  on  them,  He  said  just  the  same. 

The  Christian  faith  in  Providence  has  its  diffi- 
culties. Let  us  add,  it  is  bound  to  have  them. 
We  must  repeat  here  what  we  have  already  re- 
ferred to  (p.  165),  that,  according  to  all  we  can 
see,  God  wishes  not  only  to  be  a  revealed  but  at  the 
same  time  a  hidden  God,  because  He  wishes  to 
treat  us  as  free  creatures.  He  will  not  compel 
recognition  of  Himself  by  proofs  which  are  logi- 
cally and  mathematically  unassailable ;  what  He 
desires  is  to  win  grateful  love  with  voluntary 
homage  from  men  who  experience  such  effects  of 
Redeeming  Love  on  themselves  that  they  cannot 
any  longer  doubt  God  on  account  of  those  mys- 
teries of  His  Sovereignty  which  they  are  unable 
to  solve  here  below,  so  vast  and  wide  is  their 
experience  of  all  that  He  gives  them  and  of  the 
possessions  in  which  they  feel  themselves  blest. 


176  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

Any  one  who  chooses  to  give  up  belief  in  a 
Divine  Providence  can  do  so,  and  can  support 
his  decision  with  reasons.  To  begin  with,  he  may 
refer  to  what  we  have  called  "the  mystery  of  Pro- 
vidence ".  He  may  say :  "  What  I  see  does  not 
constitute  for  me  any  mystery  of  Providence ; 
it  simply  proves  that  there  is  no  Divine  Provi- 
dence ".  Moreover,  he  may  add  :  "  What  you  call 
evident  dispensations  of  Divine  Providence  are 
mere  events,  the  natural  connections  of  which  are 
known ;  consequently  they  are  not  occurrences 
that  have  been  designed  by  a  determining  Agent ". 
He  may  say  so,  but  he  only  raises  greater  diffi- 
culties than  are  presented  by  belief  in  Providence. 

To  mention  in  the  first  place  a  difficulty  which 
is  shared  by  belief  in  Providence — it  is  hazardous 
to  speak  of  occurrences  and  to  say  we  are  aware  of 
their  natural  connection.  Every  occurrence  has 
not  only  one  cause,  but,  in  addition  to  some 
chief  cause,  numerous  additional  causes  that  com- 
bine in  groups  which  are  continually  changing 
in  the  way  of  help,  hindrance,  or  modification. 
Who  can  disentangle  these  groups  and  find  out 
the  entire  sum  of  all  the  chief  and  the  additional 
causes  ?    The  thing  is  impossible,  for  new  material 


AND  MIRACLES  177 

and  new  forces  are  always  being  discovered  in  the 
world.  How  many  may  be  as  yet  undiscovered 
and  yet  be  already  operative  !  However,  we  pass 
over  this  difficulty,  or  rather  this  impossibility  of 
analysing  exhaustively  the  natural  concurrence 
of  any  event.  It  besets  all  reflection  on  this 
question  of  concurrence,  whether  one  adopts  an 
affirmative  or  a  negative  position  upon  belief  in 
Providence. 

Much  graver  is  the  difficulty  for  the  opponent 
of  belief  in  Providence,  if  he  founds  his  opposi- 
tion on  the  further  assertion,  that  to  know  the 
natural  concurrence  of  an  event  proves  that  this 
event  was  not  intended  by  a  determining  origin- 
ator. This  leads  us  back  again  to  the  same 
elimination  of  teleology  by  causality  which,  in  the 
preceding  section  (pp.  157  f.),  we  mentioned,  only  to 
reject  it  as  incompatible  with  a  vital  religious  view 
of  the  world.  And  more.  In  face  of  the  extra- 
ordinary adaptation  in  great  things  as  well  as  in 
small;  which  confronts  us  in  the  world  (whence  in 
the  language  of  the  classics  it  got  the  name  cosmos 
or  mundus,  i.e.  "  good  order  "),  this  idea  meets  with 
far  greater  difficulties  than  the  Christian  view  pre- 
sents to  its  supporters,  for  Christianity  sees  in  a 

12 


178  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

world  thus  fitted  for  a  certain  purpose  and  in- 
habited by  intelligent  human  beings,  the  work  of 
almighty  power  and  of  supreme  intelligence  in  a 
Living  God.  In  fact,  this  difficulty,  in  the  present 
state  of  scientific  knowledge,  amounts  to  an  in- 
soluble problem.  For  the  single  principle,  which 
hitherto  has  been  set  up  by  science  in  order  to 
explain  the  origin  of  adaptation  without  the 
operation  of  purposive  causes  in  the  origin  and 
wonderfully  purposive  structure  of  organisms,  I 
mean  natural  selection  or  the  survival  of  the  fittest 
in  the  struggle  for  existence — this  has  proved  itself 
thoroughly  inadequate  for  the  purpose. 

Over  against  these  difficulties,  those  offered  by 
belief  in  Providence  are  decidedly  smaller.  But 
it  also  has  difficulties  of  its  own.  In  especial  let 
us  note  that  which  we  have  mentioned  already  as 
a  mystery  for  faith  in  Providence ;  I  mean,  unhappy 
dispositions  of  life,  an  unfavourable  environment 
for  the  moral  and  religious  development,  human 
acts  of  violence  toward  comparatively  innocent 
people,  destructive  natural  elements,  and  in  short 
the  whole  army  of  evil  with  its  vast  and  unfair 
billeting. 

Such    mysteries    remain     mysteries ;     but,    to 


AND  MIRACLES  179 

reassure  men  of  a  perfectly  satisfactory  solution 
from  the  side  of  God,  and  of  their  own  future 
insight  into  that  solution,  the  Christian  concep- 
tion can  command  not  merely  this  world  but — 
what  is  most  essential  here — the  world  to  come. 
The  awakening  of  life's  energy,  and  especially  of 
voluntary  self-sacrificing  acts  of  love,  which  are 
called  forth  by  all  the  evils  and  especially  by  the 
calamitous  catastrophes,  indicate  how  we  are  to 
reconcile  this  mystery  with  faith  in  a  God  who 
is  Love,  and,  like  Jesus,  leave  its  solution  con- 
tentedly to  Our  Heavenly  Father.  In  opposition 
to  these  mysteries,  there  are  such  numerous  and 
obvious  proofs  of  a  Divine  Providence,  both  in 
the  history  of  mankind,  with  the  moral  order  of 
the  world  that  runs  through  it,  and  in  the  life- 
story  of  the  individual,  which  the  Christian  can 
take  as  reminders  of  the  Divine  Guidance  in  his 
own  life,  that  he  can  be  quite  at  rest  about  what 
remains  still  mysterious  to  him. 

A  second  difficulty  which  confronts  Christian 
faith  in  Providence  runs  parallel  in  the  opposite 
direction  to  the  difficulty  which  we  have  just 
described  as  lying  in  the  way  of  the  opponent  of 
belief  in  Providence.     But  again  we  can  say,  the 


180  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

Christian's  difficulty  is  less  than  his  opponent's. 
The  upholder  of  faith  in  Providence  also  sees 
himself  in  the  midst  of  a  world  where  everything, 
so  far  as  he  can  perceive  it  and  so  far  as  it  is 
not  controlled  by  the  actions  of  man's  determining 
personality,  goes  on  its  way  by  the  necessity  of 
causal  forces  subject  to  law.  He  lives  under  the 
conviction  that  all  these  occurrences  are  directed 
by  Supreme  Intelligence,  Almighty  Power,  Holi- 
ness, and  Love,  to  the  salvation  of  mankind, 
and  yet  he  nowhere  sees  the  place  where,  and 
the  way  whereby,  this  Supreme  Determining 
Power  takes  hold  of  the  course  of  Nature.  His 
experience  is  similar  to  ours  when  we  cast  a 
glance  at  Reinke's  "dominants".  "They  are 
there,  they  are  at  work,  but  how  and  where  is 
a  mystery  to  us."  It  is  similar  to  our  feelings 
as  we  look  at  the  primeval  history  of  the  earth 
and  its  inhabitants.  We  see  periods  and  places 
where  undoubtedly  something  absolutely  new, 
something  specially  purposive  and  aspiring,  some- 
thing that  paves  the  way  for  a  higher  evolution, 
enters  into  the  course  of  the  world ;  we  see  the 
origin  of  life,  then  the  origin  of  consciousness,  and 
finally  the  origin  of  self- consciousness  with  the  whole 


AND  MIRACLES  181 

mental  life  of  humanity  striving  after  its  goal. 
But  these  occurrences  always  elude  our  scientific 
observation.  Well,  we  might  content  ourselves 
with  knowing  that  no  one,  not  even  Darwin, 
has  succeeded  in  proving  that  what  is  fitted  to 
a  purpose,  as  we  see  that  existing  and  occurring 
in  such  sublime  proportions  throughout  the 
world,  can  arise  or  occur  without  a  determining 
reason.  Still  further.  We  might  quiet  ourselves 
much  more  effectively  with  this  other  fact  of 
experience,  viz.  that,  for  one  who  knows  he  is  a 
child  of  God,  the  government  of  the  world  and  the 
Providence  of  God  are  equally  true,  whether  he 
can  or  cannot  disentangle  the  threads  which  pro- 
ceed from  God  and  weave  together  the  web  of  the 
world's  course. 

Such  is,  in  fact,  the  standpoint  of  the  Christian. 
Such  must  be  his  standpoint ;  because  the  level 
of  his  religion  does  not  depend  upon  his  degree  of 
acquaintance  with  affairs  of  the  universe,  but  only 
on  the  degree  to  which  he  is  shut  in  with  God. 

Whoever  handles  the  question  of  faith  in  Pro- 
vidence in  a  scientific  spirit,  must  be  on  the  lookout 
to  see  whether  occurrences  do  not  meet  him  in  the 
sphere  of  Nature  which  offer  at  least  some  analogy 


182  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

to  a  Divine  determining  intervention  in  the  course 
of  Nature,  not  to  one  which  contradicts  the  opera- 
tions of  natural  energies  controlled  by  law,  but  to 
one  which  harmonises  with  this  operation  of  these 
energies  and  avails  itself  of  them.     We  find  such 
occurrences  in  the  fact  that  man,  together  with 
the  higher  animal  world  at  the  psychical  stage 
preliminary  to  human  mental  life,  continually  in- 
terferes in  the  course  of  Nature,  without  annul- 
ling that  control  by  Nature  according  to  which 
natural    forces    are    effective.     Every    voluntary 
movement  of  the  body,  whether  in  consequence 
of  a  resolve   or  not,  is  for  us  an  unsolved,  per- 
haps an  ever  insoluble,  mystery — although  to  our 
consciousness  it  is  no  longer  a  mystery,  because 
it  can  be  performed  by  a  man  without  any  reflec- 
tion  at   all.      The  "ego"  in   man  is  something 
immaterial.     It  inhabits  the  material  body  as  its 
organ,  and  depends  on  the  life  of  this  body,  but 
as  the  ego,  as  the  centre  of  this  human  personality, 
it  is  immaterial.     This  immaterial  "ego"  moves 
the  limbs  at  pleasure  in  this  way  or  that,  just  as 
the  ego  desires;    it  needs  for  every  fresh  move- 
ment fresh  nerves  and  muscles,  but,  for  all  that,  it 
does  not  require  to  have  the  least  knowledge  of 


AND  MIRACLES  183 

anatomy  or  physiology.  No  one  knows  how  to 
account  for  the  way  in  which  the  ''ego"  acts,  so 
as  to  call  into  action  now  these  nerves  and  muscles, 
now  those.  None  knows  how  the  motion  willed 
by  the  "  ego  "  is  effected.  Yet  there  it  is.  So  far 
as  the  movements  of  the  human  members  can 
be  directed  by  the  human  mind  to  certain  ends, 
mankind,  despite  the  restrictions  imposed  on  its 
powers  by  certain  impassable  barriers,  has  truly 
achieved  wonders  in  subduing  and  cultivating 
Nature,  in  converting  materials,  energies,  and 
laws,  into  what  should  serve  humanity  in  matters 
of  technique  and  industry  ;  nor  is  there  any  visible 
end  to  the  advances  that  may  be  made  in  this 
process  of  subduing  Nature  to  the  purposes  of 
men.  Man  does  all  this  without  breaking  the 
laws  of  Nature;  nay,  he  does  it  just  because  he 
knows  the  materials  and  energies  which  he  sub- 
dues to  his  service,  just  because  he  can  rely  on 
them  working  according  to  law,  just  because  he 
gives  to  their  operation  the  direction  he  desires. 
This  justifies  the  conclusion  that  if  man,  who  is 
a  creature  of  God,  can  make  Nature  serviceable 
to  his  aims,  without  understanding  the  manner 
and  method  of  his  action,  how  much  more  will  the 


184  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

Creator  of  Nature  and  her  laws  be  able  to  guide 
the  same  according  to  His  Will,  even  without 
showing  us  the  place  at  which  His  Guiding 
Hand  comes  into  action  ! 

Our  religious  conviction  calls  man  the  image  of 
God.  That  in  this  also  we  are  scientifically  ac- 
curate, may  be  seen  by  a  glance  at  the  theory  of 
knowledge.  Our  perceptions,  as  well  as  the  cate- 
gories according  to  which  we  think,  are  all  of  sub- 
jective origin,  even  where  they  are  occasioned  by 
what  is  objective.  But  the  fact  that,  with  these 
subjective  perceptions  and  with  these  subjective 
laws  of  thought,  in  the  midst  of  which  we  employ 
our  perceptions,  we  work  on  Nature  itself  in  so 
truly  wonderful  a  manner,  and  make  it  serve  our 
own  aims,  is  for  us  an  indisputable  proof  that 
our  subjective  reason  is  essentially  related  to  the 
objective  reason  which  rules  throughout  the  uni- 
verse. 

In  closing  this  discussion  on  faith  in  Providence, 
I  wish  to  direct  attention  to  two  publications 
on  this  question  which  are  well  worth  read- 
ing: (i)  Aids  to  an  Appreciation  of  the  Christian 
Belief  in  Providence,  by  Dr.  Willibald  Beyschlag 
(Halle,   Eugen   Strien,    1888),     (2)  Belief  in  Pro- 


AND  MIRACLES  185 

vidence  and  Natural  Science,  a  Lecture,  by  Dr.  Otto 
Kirn  (Gr.  Lichterfelde,  Berlin  ;  Edwin  Runge,  1903). 
2.  The  question  of  answers  to  prayers  has  been 
already  answered  by  our  discussion  on  faith  in 
Providence,  and  answered  in  the  affirmative.  He 
who  rejects  belief  in  Providence  will  grant  to 
prayer  at  the  most  only  a  subjective,  sedative 
effect  upon  the  mind  of  the  petitioner.  But  he 
who  takes  his  stand  on  faith  in  Providence  will 
not  only  see  in  this  calming  influence  an  answer 
on  the  part  of  the  Living  God,  but  will  also  be 
persuaded — a  persuasion  which  will  be  confirmed 
by  experience — that  God,  as  the  result  of  his 
prayer,  works  upon  the  activity  and  passivity  of 
his  fellow-men, — though  in  such  a  way,  of  course, 
that  He  does  not  take  from  them  the  freedom  of 
their  own  decision  :  they  can  obey  this  operation 
of  God  upon  them  or  not,  as  they  please.  He  will 
also  connect  with  this  the  further  conviction  that 
God,  in  consequence  of  his  prayer,  makes  certain 
things  happen  in  the  course  of  the  world  which 
would  not  have  happened  if  he  had  not  prayed. 
Moreover,  the  answering  of  prayer  is  so  emphati- 
cally and  repeatedly  assured  to  us  by  the  Founder 
of  the  Christian  Religion,  that  the  conviction  of 


186  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

our  prayers  being  heard  is  indeed  an  indispensable 
factor  in  a  Christian  view  of  the  world. 

It  is  of  course  to  be  understood  that  Christianity 
does  not  favour  selfish,  short-sighted  entreaty  to 
God  for  earthly  things.  The  fundamental  prin- 
ciple is  the  saying  of  Jesus  in  which  He  promises 
that  all  prayers  offered  to  God  in  His  Name  will 
be  heard.  In  John  xvi.  23,  He  says:  "Verily, 
verily,  I  say  unto  you,  Whatsoever  ye  shall  ask 
the  Father  in  My  Name,  I  will  do  it".  But 
prayer  in  the  Name  of  Jesus  involves  not  only  the 
conviction  that  the  exalted  Jesus  intercedes  for 
us  with  His  Heavenly  Father  to  hear  our  prayers 
as  if  they  were  His  own,  but  also  that  we  pray  in 
the  spirit  and  mind  of  Jesus.  And  we  know  the 
spirit  of  Jesus's  prayers,  not  only  from  the  prayer 
which  He  Himself  has  taught  us,  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  but  also  from  His  teaching  on  prayer 
and  from  His  own  prayers. 

When  directed  to  the  moral  and  religious  state 
of  our  hearts  and  the  character  of  our  deeds,  He 
makes  no  limitation  to  the  hearing  of  our  prayers, 
but  says  in  Luke  xi.  13  :  "  If  ye  then,  being  evil, 
know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children  ; 
how  much  more  shall  your  Father,  which  is  in 


AND  MIRACLES  187 

Heaven,  give  the  Holy  Spirit  to  them  that  ask 
Him."  Moreover,  with  regard  to  the  final  destiny 
of  His  disciples  He  makes  in  His  prayer  no  limita- 
tion, but  says  in  John  xvii.  24 :  "  Father,  I  will 
that  those  which  Thou  hast  given  Me,  be  with  Me 
where  I  am,  that  they  may  behold  My  Glory  which 
Thou  hast  given  Me  ".  But  as  regards  His  own 
fate,  He  prays  in  the  agony  in  Gethsemane  (Matt, 
xxvi.  39) :  "  O  My  Father,  if  it  be  possible,  let 
this  cup  pass  from  Me :  nevertheless  not  as  I 
will,  but  as  Thou  wilt ".  In  the  Lord's  Prayer 
we  find,  with  regard  to  what  is  earthly,  this  con- 
cession granted  to  us,  viz.  that,  according  to  the 
fourth  petition,  during  the  time  we  have  to  live 
on  earth,  we  may  pray  every  day  for  what  is 
necessary  for  life,  and  that  our  petitions  will  be 
granted.  While,  according  to  the  seventh  petition, 
we  may  not  only  experience  a  future  redemption 
from  every  evil  in  a  state  of  perfection,  and  ask 
for  the  attainment  of  this  aim,  but,  with  the 
assurance  of  being  heard,  may  even  now  ask  that 
God  take  away  and  keep  from  us  what  is  harmful 
to  our  inner  man,  so  that,  in  consequence  of  this 
prayer,  we  may  be  persuaded  that  those  experiences 
which  in  ordinary  parlance  are  called  evils,  and 


188  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

which  cause  us  pain  if  they  cross  our  path,  are  no 
longer  an  evil  for  us  but  a  beneficent  means  in 
our  education. 

Finally,  we  must  pronounce  it  an  aberration 
of  religious  fanaticism  and  a  despising  of  the 
Divine  natural  gifts  and  helpful  intervention  of 
our  fellow-men,  if,  in  the  assurance  of  our  prayers 
being  heard,  we  were  to  imagine  we  could  dispense 
with  medical  aid  and  natural  remedies. 

3.  We  shall  have  to  treat  the  question  of  mir- 
acles in  a  more  exhaustive  fashion,  because,  in 
consequence  of  the  vast  strides  made  by  natural 
science  and  the  knowledge  of  how  immutable  and 
subject  to  law  are  the  operations  of  natural  forces, 
the  idea  of  miracle  has  altered.  It  has  been  de- 
fined in  ways  that  ignore  its  religious  meaning, 
and  only  express  the  alleged  conflict  between  faith 
in  occurrences  of  Nature  that  are  subject  to  law, 
and  faith  in  miracles ;  whereas  the  religious  signi- 
ficance of  miracles  is  the  chief  thing  in  their 
conception,  compared  with  which  all  other  con- 
siderations are  secondary. 

That  a  conception  of  miracles  which  ignores 
the  religious  interest  has  become  the  rule,  is  easy 
to  prove.     I  turn  up,  e.g.,  Meyer's  small  cyclopaedic 


AND  MIRACLES  189 

dictionary  and  read  thus :  "  miracle,  according  to 
the   dogmatic  conception,  is  an  event  that    runs 
contrary  to    the   laws   of   Nature,   whereby    God 
interrupts  the  order  of  the  universe.     That  mir- 
acles are  demonstrable  is  denied  by  science."    Any 
one  who  has  thought    himself  into   the   idea  of 
miracles  held  by  a  religiously  minded  man,  will 
find    in   this    definition   of  a    miracle    almost   as 
many  inaccuracies  as  it  contains  words.      How 
can  a  religiously  minded  man  for  a  moment  en- 
tertain the  idea  that  God  could  ever  interrupt  the 
order  of  the  universe  ?     Surely  this  order  of  the 
universe  itself  comes  from  God,  Who  is  a  God  of 
order.  Where  the  religious  man  sees  anything  new, 
he  sees  not  an  interruption  but  a  development  of 
the  order  of  the  universe  in  the  line  of  realising 
that  end  to  which  God  is  leading  mankind. 

Then  as  for  the  question  whether  an  event 
is  contrary  to  the  laws  of  Nature  or  not,  the 
uneducated  religious  man  does  not  trouble  him- 
self about  it ;  he  is  only  concerned  with  the 
question  as  to  whether  the  event  indicates  God's 
Sovereignty  or  not ;  whereas  the  educated  be- 
liever, in  the  case  of  an  event  which  he  terms 
a    miracle,    and   which    he   cannot    explain    from 


190  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

the  general  context  of  Nature,  would  first  try  to 
be  sure  whether  this  event  really  took  place. 
Such  an  event,  e.g.,  as,  to  choose  the  most  strik- 
ing of  all  examples  in  story,  that  contained  in 
Joshua  x.,  the  sun  and  moon  standing  still  during 
Joshua's  battle  against  the  Amorites,  he  will 
see  fit  to  deny  for  many  reasons.  At  the  same 
time  he  will  be  perfectly  able  to  understand 
psychologically  how  such  a  narrative  could  arise. 
Such  an  event  would  certainly  have  been  an 
"  interruption  of  the  order  of  the  universe,"  nor 
could  one  think  of  a  more  radical  bouleversement. 
But  where  he  has  reason  to  assume  from  the 
narrative  of  a  miracle  that  it  has  really  happened, 
he  will  then  draw  the  conclusion  that  a  new  force,  • 
unknown  to  him  and  perhaps  unknown  to  all  man- 
kind, has  come  into  operation  and  entered  into 
the  course  of  Nature.  But  he  cannot  admit  that 
this  new  force,  of  which  he  has  hitherto  been 
unaware,  should  contradict  those  laws  of  Nature 
of  which  he  is  aware,  because,  according  to  his 
conviction,  God  is  the  Originator  of  all  the  laws 
of  Nature  and  will  not  call  anything  into  exist- 
ence that  is  contrary  to  His  own  order.  Finally, 
no  science  can  start    by  denying  that  an  event 


AND  MIRACLES  191 

which  we  call  a  miracle  can  have  actually  hap- 
pened ;  it  can  only,  with  all  the  aids  of  historical 
research,  examine  the  question  whether  it  has 
happened. 

For  our  religious  thought  and  feeling  everything 
is  a  miracle  that  indicates  the  sovereignty  of  a 
living  God,  or  that  guarantees  one  who  either 
performs  or  experiences  miracles  as  a  person  com- 
missioned by  God.  Thus  to  the  religious  man 
the  entire  universe  as  a  whole  and  in  its  details 
is  a  miracle.  The  creation  of  the  human  race  in 
particular  and  the  leading  of  them  to  become 
children  of  God  by  the  preparation  for  and  send- 
ing of  Jesus  Christ  as  redeemer,  is  to  the  religious 
man  one  great,  unique,  harmonious  miracle,  which 
unfolds  itself  in  the  chief  epochs  of  the  story  of 
salvation  by  single  miracles,  and  finally  issues  in 
one  great  central  miracle  by  the  Coming,  Person, 
and  Work  of  Jesus  Christ.  Similarly  the  Divine 
Guidance  of  his  life  is  to  the  religious  man  a 
combination  of  miracles,  even  where  he  sees  be- 
fore him  the  natural  causes  of  the  events;  for 
these  events  are  a  miracle  to  him. 

With  this  all-inclusive  significance  of  the  idea 
of  miracles, — which,  however,  does  not  at  all  ex- 


192  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

elude  the  grouping  of  miracles  in  varying  degrees 
of  value,  or  an  inquiry  whether  separate  miracles 
that  are  related  really  happened, — we  stand  on 
entirely  the  same  ground  as  that  on  which  we 
have  to  discover  the  amended  conception  of  mir- 
acles, viz.  on  the  ground  of  Holy  Scripture. 

The  entire  Old  Testament  is  full  of  utterances 
in  which  all  the  works  and  deeds  of  God  in  Nature 
and  history,  especially  in  the  history  of  Israel, 
are  called  miracles. 

Even  the  individual  man  is  a  miracle  of  God  (Ps. 
exxxix.  14) :  "  I  will  praise  Thee ;  for  I  am  fear- 
fully and  wonderfully  made :  marvellous  are  Thy 
works ;  and  that  my  soul  knoweth  right  well ".  The 
107th  Psalm  is  especially  instructive  for  the  idea 
that  even  such  ways  of  God  as  we  are  able  to 
understand  in  their  natural  context,  are  called 
miracles.  It  begins  with  this  fundamental  theme  : 
"  O  give  thanks  unto  the  Lord  for  He  is  good, 
for  His  mercy  endureth  for  ever".  Then,  in 
turn,  travellers  are  first  brought  before  our  view, 
who  wander  in  the  desert  and  must  suffer  hunger 
and  thirst,  but  at  their  request  are  led  again  by 
God  to  the  right  road.  Then  we  have  prisoners, 
who  at  their  request  are  set  at  liberty  again  by 


AND  MIRACLES  193 

God ;  then  sick  people,  who  after  crying  to  God 
are  healed ;  and  finally  sea-farers,  who  are  threat- 
ened with  loss  of  life  by  storm,  but  at  their  re- 
quest find  the  ocean  calm  and  so  can  reach  their 
haven.  Each  time  it  is  said  of  each  of  these  groups 
in  a  similarly  recurring  form:  "Let  them  praise 
the  Lord  for  His  goodness  and  for  His  wonderful 
works  to  the  children  of  men  ". 

I  said  above,  in  my  definition  of  the  religious  con- 
ception of  miracles,  that  it  in  no  way  excludes  a 
grouping  of  miracles  according  to  their  respective 
values.  We  shall  now  go  further  and  admit  that 
the  religious  conception  of  miracles  comprises  in 
itself  such  a  classification  of  miracles.  For  if  the 
religious  man  calls  everything  in  the  world,  in 
mass  as  well  as  in  detail,  a  miracle  of  God,  then 
miracles  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  word,  i.e.  the 
events  or  acts  that  diverge  from  ordinary  occur- 
rences, and  through  the  very  novelty  of  their 
features,  draw  special  attention  to  the  sovereignty 
of  God  in  aims  that  He  has  in  store  for  mankind 
— follow  for  him  as  a  matter  of  course.  These 
miracles,  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  term,  coin- 
cide with  what    in    ordinary  parlance  are  called 

miracles,  except  that  the  religious  man  who  thinks 

13 


194  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

scientifically  will  not  admit  that  these  miracles 
in  any  way  run  contrary  to  the  laws  of  Nature. 
We  will  prove  this  later  on  in  the  discussion  of 
miracles  as  "  Acts  of  Power  ".  But  even  this  dis- 
tinction of  miracles  in  the  limited  and  less  limited 
sense  is  not  rigid  ;  it  has  shifting  boundaries,  as 
e.g.  in  the  case  of  some  of  the  miracles  of  heal- 
ing that  Jesus  wrought,  of  which  one  part  was 
analogous  to  acts  of  healing  otherwise  exercised 
on  the  physical  sufferings  of  individual  men,  even 
of  those  who  in  no  way  accept  a  religious  view  of 
the  world. 

Moreover,  the  names  by  which  miracles  are 
described  in  the  original,  both  in  the  Old  and 
in  the  New  Testament,  answer  exactly  to  the 
idea  of  miracle  which  we  propose.  The  Hebrew 
and  the  Greek  nouns  for  miracles  signify  either 
"  something  astonishing,"  or  "acts  and  energies," 
or  "  signs  ".  The  word  "  astonishing  "  corresponds 
exactly  to  the  Latin  noun  "  miraculum,"  from 
whence  is  derived  the  English  word  "  miracle". 

This  suits  what  we  must,  in  distinction  to 
the  occurrences  of  Nature  known  to  us,  name 
"  miracles"  in  the  narrower  sense,  because  these 
miracles  rouse  our  astonishment  precisely  through 


AND  MIRACLES  195 

the  new  and  unexpected  element  in  them ;  but  it 
also  suits  the  recurring  millions  and  millions  of 
natural    occurrences   surrounding  us  everywhere, 
which  the  religious  man,  according  to  our  theory, 
also  calls  "  miracles,"  on  the  ground  that  they  point 
to  the  working  of  a  Living  God.     For  these  natural 
occurrences  become  for  the  religious  man  astonish- 
ing revelations  of  the  sovereignty  of  a  Living  God, 
because  he  recognises  in  them  a  harmony  of  order ; 
especially  in  organisms,  and  above  all  in  the  or- 
ganic structure  visible  in  the  life  of  man,  he  sees 
an  adaptability  to  purpose  in  the  structure,  and  a 
harmonious  concatenation  of  all  the  organs,  work- 
ing towards  an  aim,  which  the  mere  category  of 
final  causes  and  final  effects  cannot  satisfactorily 
explain.     These  compel  us  to  recognise  a  Supreme 
Intelligence  and  an  Almighty  Power  directing  all. 
This  excites  our  wonder,  because  we  see  the  work- 
ings of  this  Power  and  Reason,  and  yet  nowhere  can 
we  either  name  the  place  where,  or  fix  the  way  how, 
they  intervened  with  effective  control  in  the  course 
of  Nature.    This  last  problem  in  all  natural  events 
compels  even  "monists,"  who  dispute  the  exist- 
ence of  aim  in  the  world  and  the  sovereignty  of  a 
Living  Personal   God,   to  speak  of   "miracles"; 


196  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

even  Häckel's  latest  book  is  entitled  The  Miracles, 
or  Wonders,  of  Life. 

The  second  name  for  miracles,  which  recurs 
frequently  in  the  New  Testament,  the  name 
"  energies  "  or  "acts  of  energy,"  generally  trans- 
lated by  Luther  "  deeds,"  shows  us  with  especial 
clearness  that  the  religious  conception  of  miracle 
is  far  remote  from  any  thought  of  an  interruption 
to  the  laws  of  Nature.  For  with  the  designation 
"  energies,"  "  miracles  "  are  put  into  the  same  cate- 
gory as  any  other  operative  force  in  Nature  and 
in  human  life,  all  of  these  being  traced  back  by 
the  religious  mind  to  a  Divine  origin.  All  that 
is  conveyed  by  the  designation  of  miracles  as 
"  energies,"  is  that  they  point  in  a  specially  strik- 
ing and  direct  way  to  the  Divine  Originator  of 
this  "energy".  The  name  "energies"  or  "acts 
of  energy  "  for  miracles  was  certainly  applied  at 
a  time  when  the  conception  of  a  law  of  Nature 
as  immutable  had  in  no  way — or  at  most  in  sudden 
flashes  of  inspiration,  as  in  Psalm  cxlviii.  5  and 
6 — dawned  upon  man ;  but  it  fits  in  very  well  to 
our  modern  knowledge  of  the  reign  of  law  over 
the  energies  operative  in  the  world,  and  also  shows 
that,  even  for  the   most  advanced  knowledge  of 


AND  MIRACLES  197 

Nature  in  our  day,  the  recognition  of  miracles 
certainly  does  not  involve  belief  in  an  interrup- 
tion of  the  laws  of  Nature.  When  anything 
occurs,  it  means  an  energy  or  group  of  energies 
coming  into  operation  and  thereby  superseding 
the  other  energies  for  some  time,  without  affect- 
ing the  reign  of  law  over  what  has  temporarily 
been  called  into  operation,  or  over  the  forces 
which  have  been  momentarily  put  aside.  In  the 
case  of  miracles  in  the  narrower  sense,  we  see 
with  especial  clearness  that  the  Sovereignty  of  a 
Living  God  is  behind  what  happens ;  but  whether 
God  works  directly  in  these  events  or  through 
intervening  causes  yet  unknown  to  us,  whether 
these  intervening  causes  are  forces  which  now 
come  into  existence  for  the  first  time,  or  forces 
already  present  with  all  their  laws  of  operation, 
which  are  unloosed  now  for  the  first  and  only  time, 
or  only  at  rare  intervals,  lying  latent  during  the 
intervening  periods — all  this,  I  repeat,  lies  hidden 
from  our  view.  That  God  in  all  He  does,  even  in 
His  exceptional  wonders  designated  as  "acts  of 
energy,"  works  in  no  unmethodical  aimless  way, 
but  in  harmony  with  all  His  other  actions  and  in 
perfect  conformity  to  a  purpose,  this  we  take  as 


198  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

unquestionable.  But  that  does  not  exclude  ex- 
ceptional acts  of  energy  pointing  to  the  Divine 
Sovereignty  in  an  exceptional  way. 

This  leads  us  to  the  third  designation  of  mira- 
cles as  "  signs,"  which  is  also  extremely  common. 
Miracles  are  called  signs,  partly  because  they 
point  to  the  Sovereignty  of  God,  partly  because 
they  prove  him  who  performs  them  to  be  a 
messenger  with  a  commission  from  God  and 
equipped  for  this  commission  with  special  powers. 

With  regard  to  this  designation  of  miracle  as 
"sign,"  the  question  of  primary  importance  is 
what  degree  of  proof  attaches  to  miracles,  in  the 
mind  and  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ,  particularly 
to  those  miracles  which  interest  us  most  deeply 
as  Christians,  namely  those  which  the  evangelic 
narratives  declare  to  have  been  performed  by 
Jesus.  By  way  of  answer,  we  get  the  remarkable 
assurance  that  they  are  merely  of  secondary  value 
as  proofs.  The  primary  proof  of  divine  credentials 
possessed  by  messengers  of  God  must  lie  in  the 
immediate  impression  produced  by  their  person 
and  their  words.  When  Jesus  saw  Himself  sur- 
rounded by  unbelieving  people,  He  performed  no 
signs  "because  of  their  unbelief".     When  people 


AND  MIRACLES  199 

expressly  asked  Him  for  signs  as  a  condition  of 
faith  in  Him,  He  refused  their  request.  Even 
when  He  had  reason  to  suspect  an  unexpressed 
desire  for  signs,  He  said  to  them  in  rebuke :  "  If 
you  see  signs  and  wonders,  yet  will  ye  not  be- 
lieve ".  But  where  faith  in  Him  already  existed, 
He  readily  aided  it  by  showing  His  miraculous 
power;  He  revivified  thereby  a  faith  already  ex- 
isting and  made  it  still  stronger,  often  adding  ex- 
pressly :  "  Thy  faith  hath  made  thee  whole  ". 

This  standpoint  which  Jesus  Himself  assumed 
with  regard  to  the  question  of  miracles,  shows  us 
in  our  own  day  how  to  view  the  acceptance  or  re- 
jection of  faith  in  miracles. 

Acceptance  or  rejection  of  faith  in  miracles 
stands  in  most  vital  connection  with  our  view  of 
the  world.  A  naturalistic  view  has  no  place  for 
faith  in  miracles.  It  lacks  the  obvious  supposition 
for  all  such  faith,  viz.,  the  recognition  of  a  Living 
and  Almighty  God  Who  rules  the  world,  and 
the  recognition  of  any  purposive  tendency.  On 
the  naturalistic  view,  the  human  individual  ceases 
with  death,  and  the  whole  human  race  is  going 
to  annihilation — what  room  is  there  for  miracles  ? 
The  supporters  of  a  naturalistic  view  can  at  most 


200  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

use  the  name  "  miracle  "  metaphorically  for  what- 
ever still  exists  in  the  occurrences  of  Nature  that 
they  cannot  yet  explain.  When  accounts  of  mir- 
acles in  the  narrower  sense  cross  their  path,  they 
simply  explain  that  they  are  impossible,  and  there- 
fore that  they  never  happened,  no  matter  how 
striking  are  the  proofs  for  their  occurrence  ;  others 
they  may  declare  as,  e.g.,  some  cases  of  healing 
the  sick,  to  be  occurrences  which  can  be  ade- 
quately accounted  for  within  the  sphere  of  natural 
conditions. 

The  position  of  a  supporter  of  the  teleological, 
theistic,  and  especially  the  Christian  view  of  the 
world  toward  the  question  of  miracles,  is  entirely 
different. 

When  miracles  in  the  narrower  sense  are  re- 
lated to  him,  he  will  certainly  feel  himself  bound 
to  ascertain,  with  all  available  means  of  historical 
and  psychological  research,  whether  what  is  related 
has  really  happened,  and  whether  one  has  reason 
to  assume  that  it  happened  exactly  as  it  is  said  to 
have  done.  But  he  will  not  at  the  outset  reject 
the  miracle  as  impossible,  and  therefore  as  never 
having  occurred.  The  possibility  of  miracle  is  in- 
volved, for  him,  in  the  seriousness  of  his  faith  that 


AND  MIRACLES  201 

an  Almighty  God  is  Creator  and  Guide  of  the 
world.  And  the  probability,  nay,  the  certainty, 
that  miracles  in  the  narrower  sense  have  happened, 
can  still  happen,  and  will  happen,  is  bound  up  for 
him  in  his  conviction  that  the  whole  human  race 
and  the  separate  personalities  of  men  have  been 
created  by  God  capable  of  and  responsible  for 
moral  freedom,  born  with  the  capacity  and  in- 
stinct for  moral  perfection,  i.e.  for  a  goal  as  yet 
unattained.  Now,  when  aims  not  yet  attained 
are  in  question,  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  exclude 
miracles  in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  word.  For 
the  essence  of  miracles  in  the  narrower  sense  con- 
sists in  the  emergence  of  something  new,  some- 
thing that  draws  attention  to  the  Sovereignty  of 
God  and  to  the  goal  towards  which  He  is  leading 
the  children  of  men.  Above  all,  when  he  who 
takes  his  stand  on  a  Christian  view  of  the  world 
recognises  in  Jesus  Christ  his  own  and  the  world's 
Redeemer  from  sin  and  death,  and  when  through 
Him  he  has  learnt  to  know  God  as  his  Heavenly 
Father  and  to  have  communion  with  Him,  he  will 
no  doubt  be  scrupulous  in  observing  the  necessary 
precautions  against  accepting  isolated  accounts 
of  miracles,  but  he  will  be  inclined  at  the  outset 


202  PROVIDENCE,  PRAYER 

to  assume  that  this  elevation  of  mankind  to  the 
state  of  Redemption  and  the  position  of  God's  chil- 
dren, and  especially  the  appearance  and  work  of 
the  Redeemer,  has  revealed  something  new  in  the 
experience  of  mankind,  revealed  it,  i.e.,  through 
miracles.     We  shall  see,  in  our  next  section,  with 
what  cogent  reasons  the  greatest  of  all  recorded 
miracles,  the  Resurrection   of  Jesus  Christ  from 
the  dead,  compels  recognition  as  an  historical  fact. 
Any  one   who    sees  himself  compelled  to  recog- 
nise this  fact  will  not  be  deterred  from  confessing 
his  belief  in  miracles  by  the  reproach  of  backward- 
ness in  scientific  knowledge,  a  reproach  hurled  at 
those  who  believe  in  miracles.     By  the  very  cau- 
tion of  the    criticism  with  which  he  approaches 
the  record  of  miracles  in  the  narrower  sense,  he 
will  be  in  a  position  to  show  whether  or  not  he 
is  to  be  numbered  among  those  who  are  retrograde 
in    science.      He  may  find  himself  compelled  to 
assign  the  whole  universe  in  mass  as  well  as  in 
detail  to  miracles  in  the  wider  sense,  and  above 
all  to  include  his  own  existence  and  the  course  of 
his  own  life ;  yet  this  constitutes  for  him  a  peren- 
nial fount  of  joy,  a  rich  and  overflowing  compensa- 
tion for  any  reproach  of  scientific  backwardness. 


AND  MIRACLES  203 

It  is  a  matter  for  rejoicing  to  see  that  even 
scientists,  e.g.  Dr.  E.  Dennert  in  his  book  The 
Bible  and  Science  (Stuttgart,  Kielmann,  1904),  stand 
up  so  bravely  and  ably  for  faith  in  miracles  as 
based  upon  faith  in  an  Almighty  and  Living  God. 
Among  theologians  who  have  grasped  the  idea  of 
miracle  so  as  to  make  its  religious  character  the 
central  point  of  the  conception,  instead  of  any 
contradiction  of  miracle  with  the  laws  of  Nature, 
I  would  mention  the  late  Willibald  Beyschlag, 
who  treats  of  faith  in  miracles  in  the  volume 
already  mentioned  upon  Christian  faith  in  Pro- 
vidence, and  in  still  more  detail  in  the  first  volume 
of  his  Life  of  Jesus  (Halle,  Strien,  first  ed.,  1885) 
as  well  as  in  his  New  Testament  Theology  (1896, 
same  publisher).  Albrecht  Ritschl  also  (1822-89), 
in  the  Annual  of  German  Theology  for  1861,  pro- 
posed a  conception  of  miracle  which  makes  the  reli- 
gious and  teleological  significance  the  central  point, 
thus  avoiding  the  possibility  of  any  collision  be- 
tween Science  and  Christianity.  In  my  book  on  the 
Darwinian  theories  (1876)  I  have  myself  treated 
the  whole  question  of  Providence,  with  answers  to 
prayer  and  miracles,  in  a  special  paragraph  (par.  39) 
which  enters  into  greater  detail  than  the  present 
pages.    My  position  there  is  the  same  as  I  hold  now. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS  CHRIST 

An  inquiry  into  the  relations  between  Science  and 
Christianity  has  finally  to  include  the  person  of 
Jesus  Christ  Himself  within  the  circle  of  its  dis- 
cussions. The  Biblical  accounts  of  His  virgin  birth, 
of  the  miracles  He  performed,  and  of  His  Resur- 
rection, compel  us  to  take  this  step. 

For  us  Christians,  Jesus  Christ  in  His  Person 
and  in  His  Work  alike  is  utterly  unique  among 
all  men.  He  is  unique  in  His  Person.  He  is 
indeed  truly  human  and  as  such  has  shared  the 
sufferings  and  death  of  sinful  man.  But  He  is 
at  the  same  time  the  sinless,  perfect  Son  of  God, 
Who  as  the  Personal  Revelation  of  God  stands 
unique  amid  humanity.  And  He  is  unique  in 
His  Work.  He  has  redeemed  mankind  from  sin 
and  death,  and  has  become  thereby  the  One 
Mediator   between    God    and    man.       For    those 

reasons  we  cannot  admit  the  right  of  Science  to 

204 


THE  PERSON  OF  JESUS  CHRIST  205 

attack  the  uniqueness  of  the  Person  and  career 
of  Jesus,  because  it  finds  no  such  analogy  among 
other  men.  It  is  this  very  uniqueness  that  lifts 
Him  above  the  criticism  of  science.  It  is  only 
historical  research,  next  to  the  direct  religious 
experience  that  we  ourselves  personally  enjoy 
through  Him,  that  has  any  right  to  speak,  because 
its  business  is  to  discuss  with  us  the  question 
whether  we  have  any  right  or  reason  to  assume 
that  what  is  told  of  Him  really  happened.  As  far 
as  historical  research  has  to  answer  this  question 
in  the  affirmative,  its  results  do  fall  within  the 
circle  of  Science,  but  only  in  the  sense  that  Science 
has  to  see  how  it  can  adjust  itself  to  facts  which 
it  cannot  deny,  but  which  on  the  other  hand  are 
not  analogous  to  the  results  otherwise  attained  by 
scientific  investigation. 

Well,  in  the  case  of  the  three  unique  stories 
of  the  life  of  Jesus,  historical  research  reaches 
dissimilar  results.  In  the  case  of  the  stories  of 
the  virgin  birth  of  Jesus,  it  has  to  confess  its 
ignorance.  The  records  of  Jesus  having  often 
performed  many  miracles,  it  finds  valid,  but  it 
must  be  deemed  possible  that,  in  the  decades 
between  the  life  of  Jesus  and  the  composition  of 


206  THE  PERSON  OF 

the  Gospels,  the  account  of  several  miracles  has 
been  embellished,  if  it  does  not  owe  its  origin  to 
the  unconscious  and  inventive  religious  imagina- 
tion. The  account  of  Jesus's  Resurrection  is  found 
also  credible,  even  though  a  harmony  of  all  the 
individual  features  in  the  different  narratives  is 
not  feasible,  while  the  possibility  is  not  to  be 
excluded  that  one  or  another  trait  may  have  been 
added  by  unconscious  and  inventive  religious 
feeling.  We  shall  try  to  prove  this  briefly  in 
detail. 

i.  The  Account  of  the  Virgin  Birth  of  Jesus 

The  virgin  birth  of  Jesus  is  narrated  in  the 
Gospels  of  Matthew  and  Luke;  but  all  through 
the  record  of  the  birth  and  childhood  of  Jesus, 
the  two  gospels  differ  so  widely  from  one  another 
that  they  defy  any  verbal  harmony. 

The  Gospel  of  Matthew  begins  with  a  register 
of  births  which  traces  Jesus  through  forty-two 
ancestors  from  Joseph,  Mary's  husband,  past  David 
back  to  Abraham.  Thereupon  it  relates  that  Mary, 
Joseph's  bride,  was  found  to  be  with  child  before 
her  marriage.  Joseph  took  her  therefore  to  be  a 
fallen  woman,  though  he  did  not  wish  openly  to 


JESUS  CHRIST  207 

reprove  her,  but  to  put  her  away  privately. 
Thereupon  an  angel  of  the  Lord  appeared  to  him 
in  a  dream  and  explained  to  him  that  Mary  was 
with  child  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  would  bear  a 
Son  whose  Name  should  be  called  Jesus  (Saviour), 
for  He  should  save  His  people  from  their  sins. 
On  awaking,  Joseph  took  his  wife  home,  and 
when  she  bore  a  son  he  called  Him  Jesus. 

Now  when  Jesus  was  born  at  Bethlehem  in 
Judaea,  there  appeared  wise  men  from  the  East 
in  Jerusalem,  led  thither  by  a  star,  and  asking 
after  the  new-born  King  of  the  Jews.  King  Herod 
directed  them  to  Bethlehem,  on  the  ground  of 
information  received  from  the  scribes  concerning 
the  prophesied  birth-place  of  the  Messiah.  There, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  star,  they  found  the 
Child,  paid  Him  homage,  and  returned  another 
way  home,  being  warned  by  a  dream.  Joseph 
also,  in  consequence  of  a  warning  received  in 
a  dream,  fled  with  the  mother  and  Child  into 
Egypt.  Then  came  the  slaughter  of  the  innocents 
at  Bethlehem,  and  after  the  death  of  Herod  the 
return  of  the  holy  family  to  Judaea.  But  because 
Joseph  was  afraid  of  Archelaus,  the  son  of  Herod, 
who  had   become   King  in  Judaea  instead  of  his 


208  THE  PERSON  OF 

father  Herod,  he  settled  down  with  his  family  in 
Galilee  and  took  up  his  abode  in  Nazareth. 

Luke's  account  is  different.  He  begins  with 
the  account  of  the  wonderful  prophecy  and  birth 
of  John  the  Baptist,  according  to  the  message 
of  the  angel  Gabriel,  a  child  granted  to  a 
hitherto  childless  and  aged  priest  and  his  wife. 
Then  he  relates  the  Annunciation  to  Mary  in 
Nazareth,  by  the  same  angel,  that  she  should  be 
with  child  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  should  bear  a 
Son  and  call  His  name  Jesus,  and  that  He  should 
be  the  Messiah.  Mary  then  visits  her  relative 
Elizabeth,  the  mother  of  John  the  Baptist,  of 
whose  pregnancy  the  angel  Gabriel  had  likewise 
told  her.  At  this,  both  mothers  mutually  give 
utterance  to  their  hopes  in  prophetically  inspired 
words,  while  Zacharias,  the  father  of  John,  speaks 
in  prophecy  on  the  occasion  of  his  son's  circum- 
cision. And  now  through  a  decree  of  Caesar 
Augustus,  that  all  the  world  should  be  taxed, 
Joseph  and  Mary  come  to  Bethlehem  the  city  of 
David.  There  the  birth  of  Jesus  takes  place  in 
deepest  poverty  in  a  stable,  but  is  announced  to 
pious  shepherds  in  the  field  by  the  angel  of 
the  Lord,  whereupon  they  hear  the  multitude  of 


JESUS  CHRIST  209 

the  heavenly  host  praising  God.  The  shepherds 
then  go  and  pay  homage  to  the  Child.  After 
eight  days  follow  the  circumcision  and  the  naming 
of  Jesus ;  then,  forty  days  after  His  Birth,  the 
customary  presentation  in  the  temple  at  Jeru- 
salem, where  the  new-born  Babe  is  saluted  as  the 
Messiah  by  the  aged  Simeon  and  Anna.  Then 
the  parents  return  to  their  home  in  Nazareth. 

Luke  gives  us  also  a  genealogical  tree  of  Joseph 
that  goes  back  past  David.  He  puts  it  into  his 
gospel  after  the  narrative  of  the  baptism  of  Jesus 
by  John.  This  genealogical  tree  does  not  only  go 
back,  like  that  of  Matthew,  to  Abraham  but  to 
Adam.  Yet  in  the  numbers  and  in  the  names 
of  the  ancestors,  it  differs  widely  from  that  of 
Matthew.  At  the  very  beginning  the  father  of 
Joseph  is  not  called  Jacob  as  is  the  case  in 
Matthew,  but  Heli,  while  in  Matthew  the  line 
goes  from  David  through  Solomon  and  in  Luke 
through  Nathan.  Nor  do  the  two  narratives 
agree  in  their  wording.  Their  difference  shows 
that  in  the  primitive  Christian  circles  a  coherent 
tradition  concerning  the  circumstances  of  the  birth 
of  Jesus  did  not  exist.     The  narratives  refer  back 

to  different  sources  of  tradition.     Beyschlag  con- 

14 


210  THE  PERSON  OF 

jectures  in  his  Life  of  Jesus  (vol.  i.)  that  Matthew 
reproduced  an  oral  tradition  in  plain  language, 
but  that  Luke  used  two  written  sources,  in  his 
first  chapter  a  poetical,  in  the  second  chapter  one 
more  historical. 

To  this  difference  of  the  two  reports  must  be 
added  the  further  circumstance  that  neither  the 
Gospel  of  Mark  nor  of  John,  nor  any  other  New 
Testament  writing,  knows  anything  about  the 
virgin  birth  of  Jesus,  that  Paul  in  his  unques- 
tionably genuine  Epistle  to  the  Romans  (i.  3  and  4) 
and  Peter  in  his  discourse  on  the  day  of  Pentecost 
(Acts  ii.  30)  seem  to  presuppose  the  Davidic 
descent  of  Jesus  through  Joseph,  and  that  there 
is  no  trace,  in  the  missionary  activity  of  the  early 
Church,  that  any  allusion  was  made  to  a  virgin 
birth  of  Jesus. 

With  these  historical  facts,  finally,  we  must 
correlate  the  theological  consideration  that  our 
conviction  of  the  uniqueness  of  Jesus  Christ's 
Divine  Sonship   does    not  require  a  virgin  birth. 

We  see  in  Him  a  new  scion  who  has  been 
grafted  from  above  into  the  genealogical  tree  of 
sinful  humanity.  But  this  is  just  as  conceivable 
if   He  were  begotten  of  parents,  as  if  He  were 


JESUS  CHRIST  211 

born  of  a  virgin.  For  even  in  the  latter  case 
the  hereditary  sin  which  the  newly  born  son  of 
a  mother  would  bring  into  the  world  would  have 
to  be  overcome  by  a  divine  New  Creation  of 
His  ethical  condition,  just  as  surely  as  in  the 
first  case. 

We  may  not  therefore  depreciate  the  Christian 
heritage  of  those  who  doubt  or  deny  the  virgin 
birth  of  Jesus  for  the  reasons  just  outlined,  as 
though  that  heritage  were  inferior  to  the  saving 
experience  of  those  who,  on  the  ground  of  two 
Bible  narratives,  affirm  the  virgin  birth.  Bey- 
schlag,  who  for  a  long  time  accepted  the  virgin 
birth  and  then  gradually  felt  himself  compelled 
to  reject  it,  shows  in  his  Life  of  Jesus  how 
tenderly  and  with  what  deep  religious  feeling 
one  can  from  this  standpoint  do  justice  to  the 
origin,  the  beauty,  and  the  relative  truth  of  the 
records. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  cannot  go  further  than 
the  admission  that  historical  research  has  con- 
cluded it  can  say  nothing  either  about  the  virgin 
birth  of  Jesus  or  about  His  generation  by  Joseph 
and  Mary.  It  cannot  deny  either  one  or  the 
other.      For  if  a   virgin    birth   took   place,   this 


212  THE  PERSON  OF 

remained,  according  to  all  rules  of  psychology,  a 
sacred  secret  to  Joseph  and  Mary,  which  only  in 
very  rare  moments,  perhaps  far  distant  from  one 
another  in  point  of  time,  was  communicated  to  one 
or  another  of  their  trusty  intimate  friends  in  a 
confidential  way.  This  would  explain  how  such 
disjointed  and  fragmentary  reports  could  result 
in  such  different  accounts  as  are  contained  in  the 
gospels  of  Matthew  and  Luke.  Moreover,  it  is 
self-evident  that  it  could  not  have  been  God's 
purpose  that  allusions  to  the  exceptional  character 
of  His  birth  should  aid  faith  in  Jesus  as  the 
Redeemer  of  the  world.  This  would  be  in  con- 
tradiction to  all  that  we  know  of  the  substance 
of  the  first  missionary  sermons  of  Christendom. 
The  impression  of  the  Person  of  Jesus,  of  His 
Word  and  of  His  Work,  that  is  what  must  waken 
and  maintain  and  ripen  faith — not  any  news  about 
some  physical  miracle  whereby  He  came  into  the 
world. 

Little  as  we  can  prove  the  virgin  birth  of 
Jesus  with  the  aid  of  historical  research,  as  little 
then  can  we  deny  it.  Nor  can  we  deny  its 
possibility  on  the  ground  of  natural  science.  If 
Jesus    had    simply   been   a   man   like   ourselves, 


JESUS  CHRIST  213 

even  though  He  had  been  the  greatest  of  religious 
geniuses  that  has  ever  appeared  among  mankind, 
then  natural  science  would  certainly  have  had 
ample  right  to  assert,  on  the  analogy  of  all  ex- 
perience, that  He  did  not  come  into  the  world 
in  any  other  way  than  we  do,  i.e.,  by  parental 
generation.  But  it  is  a  fact  of  experience  that 
with  the  coming  of  Jesus  into  the  world  something 
utterly  new  and  supreme  has  become  a  permanent 
part  of  humanity.  The  language  of  Christian 
piety  calls  this  new  thing  "the  Kingdom  of  God," 
or  "  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  "  ;  in  individual  men, 
it  is  redemption  from  sin  and  death,  sonship  with 
God,  and  eternal  life.  Now  science,  for  all  its 
concrete  clearness,  does  not  know  by  what  way, 
even  prior  to  the  creation  of  man,  God  called 
into  existence  the  new  and  higher  forms  of 
existence  which  have  successively  appeared  on 
the  earth.  If  the  conjecture  is  well-founded  that 
markedly  higher  organisms  were  originated,  not 
by  gradual  but  by  spasmodic  evolution,  then  we 
are  quite  ignorant  as  to  whether  these  new  and 
higher  organisms,  which  thus  spasmodically  ap- 
pear, may  not  have  come  into  existence  through 
this   very  medium  of  parthenogenesis  (i.e.  through 


214  THE  PERSON  OF 

a  virgin  birth).     Above  all,  we  do  not  know  cir- 
cumstantially and   clearly  how   God  called  man 
into  existence,  even  supposing  we  assume  that  He 
created  him  on  a  previous   basis   in   the  animal 
world.     The  thought  of  parthenogenesis  at  once 
suggests  itself  at  this  point.     Now  the  sending 
of  the  Redeemer   is   the  last,  the   greatest,  and 
the  climax  of  God's  new  creations  on  earth.     It  is 
also  the  only  one  that  falls  within  the  temporal 
limits  of  human  history.     Hence  the  possibility 
that  this  last  of  God's  new  creations  was  called 
into  being  by  parthenogenesis,  is  not  to  be  denied, 
for,  on  the  analogy  of  all  His  dealings  with  us, 
God  may  have  let  a  veil  fall  over  the  history  of 
this   occurrence,   which    leaves   room   for   doubt. 
Here  the  law  manifest  throughout   all  the  great 
questions  of  human  life  would  apply,  viz.,  that  God 
declares  Himself  to  be   not   only  a  revealed  but 
also  a  hidden  God,  because,  instead   of  desiring 
to   force    the    recognition    of    Himself   and   His 
Sovereignty  by  the  weight  of  logic  or  irrefutable 
inductive  proofs,  He  would  gain  that  recognition 
by  the  trustful  devotion  of  man's  heart  to  Himself. 
Moreover,  a  glance  at  the  Person  and  Work  of 
Jesus  will  make  us  content  with  this  view.    Where 


JESUS  CHRIST  215 

so  much  is  revealed,  where,  above  all,  whatever 
promotes  our  salvation  and  peace  is  so  accessible, 
we  need  not  wonder  if  a  veil  is  drawn  over  Jesus's 
entrance  into  the  world,  a  veil  which  we  can 
hardly  raise,  if  we  can  raise  it  at  all. 

The  result  of  our  investigations,  then,  is,  that 
we  must  not  deny  the  full  possession  of  salvation 
to  those  who  doubt  or  deny  the  virgin  birth  of 
Jesus,  nor  must  we  charge  those  who  affirm  it  with 
lack  of  science,  nor  again  must  we  deny  to  those 
who  are  contented  to  be  ignorant  the  courage  of 
confession  or  joy  in  believing.  The  question  of  joy 
in  believing  does  not  come  up  at  all  here,  for  the 
essence  of  faith  does  not  consist  in  maintaining 
the  truth  of  a  narrative  or  a  doctrine,  although  such 
maintenance  must  have  a  place  of  its  own  in  faith  ; 
it  consists  in  trust  The  original  language  of  the 
New  Testament  has  the  same  word  for  faith  and 
trust.  Trust  in  Jesus,  in  the  case  of  those  who 
confess  that  they  do  not  know  the  manner  of  His 
birth,  and  in  the  case  of  those  who  assume  that 
Jesus  was  born  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  may  be  just 
as  great  as  in  the  case  of  those  who  affirm  the 
virgin  birth  of  Jesus. 


216  THE  PERSON  OF 

2.  The  Miracles  of  Jesus 
On  the  miracles  of  Jesus  I  can  state  my  views 
more  briefly,  as  almost  everything  essential  to  this 
problem  has  already  been  discussed  in  the  third 
part  of  the  section  on  Providence,  answers  to 
prayer,  and  miracles. 

That  Jesus  performed  many  miracles,  and 
specially  that  He  healed  many  sick  in  a  wonder- 
ful way,  is  beyond  all  doubt.  Not  only  are  the 
four  evangelists  at  one  on  this,  but  the  other 
New  Testament  writings,  many  of  which  are 
earlier  than  the  Gospels,  assume  it  as  indisput- 
able. Men  like  Paul  were  conscious — and  their 
experience  bore  them  out — that  they  themselves 
and  the  other  first  witnesses  of  Jesus,  as  well  as 
whole  congregations,  such  as  that  of  the  Church 
at  Corinth,  had  received  from  Jesus  Himself  power 
to  perform  miracles.  The  contents  of  the  very 
first  sermon  on  Jesus  amount  to  this,  that  Jesus 
died  and  rose  again  for  us  and  proved  Himself  by 
word  and  deed  to  be  the  Son  of  God — the  Messiah. 

As  for  the  separate  accounts  of  miracles,  it 
must  be  admitted  that  in  the  decades  between 
Jesus  and  the  origin  of  the  four  Gospels,  this  or 
that  story  may  have  arisen  in  the  course  of  time, 


JESUS  CHRIST  217 

or  have  gradually  been  adorned  with  various  ad- 
ditions.     Critical    historical    research  concerning 
the  recorded  miracles  will  therefore  never  be  at 
rest.     Its  results  will  vary  according  to  the  indi- 
vidual character  of  the  investigator  and   of  his 
readers,  and  often  enough  a  choice  of  alternatives 
will  be  left  open.     Let  not  that  disturb  us.     We 
have   shown   above   (p.  202)   that  Jesus  Himself 
ranks  His  miracles  only  in  the  second  place  as  a 
proof  of  His  Divine  mission,  and  that  this  must 
remain  our  standpoint  to-day.     We  can  therefore, 
without  any  disquiet,  doubt  or  surrender  one  or 
another  characteristic  in  the  record  of  a  miracle, 
or  even  the  entire  narrative  of  a  miracle,  without 
introducing  confusion  into  our  conviction  of  Jesus's 
miraculous  power,  and  of  the  value  His  miracles 
had  and  still  have  for  faith.     Moreover,  we  need 
not  be  disturbed  when  attempts  are  made,  in  the 
case  of  several  of  His  miracles,  to  correlate  His 
power   with    certain    "  energies "    in    the   natural 
situation  of  man,  as  e.g.,  in  the  case  of  several 
instances  of  the  healing  of  sick  people,  although 
this  does  not  apply  to  every  case,  and  in  particular 
is   irrelevant   to  the  case   of  those  whom   Jesus 
healed  at  a  distance.     Certainly  one  could  not  go 


218  THE  PERSON  OF 

as  far  as  Beyschlag,  who,  in  his  Life  of  Jesus 
(vol.  i.,  3rd  ed.,  p.  326),  when  discussing  the 
account  of  the  changing  of  water  into  wine  at 
the  wedding  at  Cana  (John  ii.  1-11),  tries  to  avoid 
the  impression  of  magic  by  thinking  of  an  analogy 
in  hypnotic  suggestion,  thus  transferring  the  mir- 
acle from  the  water-pots  to  an  illusion  of  the 
senses  on  the  part  of  the  wedding-guests.  That 
would  have  been  no  manifestation  of  His  Glory 
such  as  is  intended  by  the  evangelist  who  re- 
lates the  miracle.  Surely  here  it  is  more  advis- 
able to  admit  simply  that  one  does  not  understand 
the  occurrence.  Nor  does  Dennert  help  us,  when, 
in  his  book  on  The  Bible  and  Natural  Science  (p. 
307),  he  adduces  proof  that  in  this  miracle  it  is 
a  question,  not  of  the  new  creation  of  elements 
that  were  not  already  at  hand  in  the  house-,  but 
only  of  some  sudden  and  new  combination  of  the 
same.  Water  consists  of  hydrogen  and  oxygen ; 
wine,  as  regards  its  chief  ingredients,  of  alcohol 
and  sugar.  The  latter,  like  the  other  ingredients 
of  wine,  are  composed  of  hydrogen,  oxygen  and 
carbon.  Now  hydrogen  and  oxygen  are  found  in 
water,  oxygen  also  in  the  air,  and  carbon  in  car- 
bonic acid,  which  is  always  present  in  the  air ;  so 


JESUS  CHRIST  219 

that  all  the  chemical  elements  of  which  wine 
consists  were  already  in  the  house.  But,  how  the 
water  suddenly  turned  to  wine  at  the  will  of 
Jesus,  is  surely  not  made  more  intelligible  to  us 
by  the  fact  that  the  chemical  elements  of  the 
wine  were  already  at  hand ;  although,  at  the 
same  time,  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  some 
reference  to  the  natural  surroundings  of  a  miracle 
has  generally  a  bearing  of  its  own. 

It  is  not,  however,  our  business  to  discuss 
single  miracles  of  Jesus.  Our  task  is  to  investi- 
gate the  attitude  of  Science  towards  the  miracu- 
lous narratives  in  the  life  of  Jesus.  If  we  can  lay 
down  a  general  principle,  controlling  this  attitude, 
we  are  saved  any  inquiry  into  individual  instances. 
Now,  we  have  already  (p.  199  f.)  paved  the 
way  for  such  a  general  principle,  by  proving  that 
the  thought  of  an  interruption  of  the  laws  of 
Nature  was  remote  from  the  religious  and  biblical 
conception  of  miracles,  and  that  this  conception 
is  disposed  to  rank  ordinary  and  extraordinary 
occurrences  alike  under  the  category  of  miracle. 

On  this  view,  Science  has  no  occasion  to  deny  his- 
torical and  religious  inquiry  the  right  of  discussing 
the  question  whether  Jesus  performed  miracles  in 


220  THE  PERSON  OF 

the  narrower  sense,  or  to  monopolise  such  inquiries. 
The  decision  for  or  against  faith  in  miracles  is 
arrived  at,  not  in  the  sphere  of  natural  science, 
but  in  metaphysics,  and  in  consequence  of  our 
general  view  of  the  universe.  For  any  one  who 
completely  denies  purpose  in  the  world  or  the 
Existence  and  Sovereignty  of  an  Almighty  Power 
and  a  Supreme  Intelligence,  there  can  be  no 
miracle  at  all.  But  whoever  affirms  both,  for 
him  the  whole  world  is  full  of  wonders ;  and 
whenever  a  man  admits  that  these  purposes  of 
life  are  not  yet  achieved,  but  are  only  in  process 
of  being  worked  out,  it  becomes  self-evident  that 
new  incidents  in  life,  which  refer  to  such  processes 
and  purposes,  i.e.  miracles  in  the  narrower  sense, 
have  happened  and  can  still  happen.  The  deeper 
a  man's  mind,  the  less  will  it  be  shackled  by  ideas 
of  any  arbitrariness  in  God's  so-called  method  of 
originating  miracles  or  of  revising  His  own  works  ; 
and  miracles  (in  a  narrower  sense)  of  whose  re- 
ality he  is  convinced,  will  appear  in  ever  closer 
connection  with  those  aims  towards  which  God 
is  leading  man  and  the  Universe.  It  is  necessary 
to  say  this ;  for  not  only  may  faith  in  miracles, 
if  uncontrolled  by  thought,  lead  to  serious  errors, 


JESUS  CHRIST  221 

but  one  often  reads  and  hears  that  for  those  who 
believe  in  miracles  God  must  always  be  correc- 
ting His  own  work,  or  that  He  acts  according 
to  caprice  and  arbitrary  choice. 

Finally,  the  answer  to  the  question,  how  did 
Jesus  Himself  regard  His  own  miracles,  may  also 
show  the  wide  outlook  on  things  which  His  mir- 
acles open  before  us.  Before  Jesus  performed  His 
first  miracle,  He  had  the  consciousness  of  pos- 
sessing the  gift  of  miracles,  not  in  order  to  use  it 
for  personal  ends,  but  to  bring  about  the  speedy 
coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  God.  This  is  shown 
us  by  the  story  of  the  temptation,  which  occurs 
in  the  period  between  His  Baptism  by  John  the 
Baptist  and  His  entrance  upon  the  public  ministry. 
Pity  for  the  physical  and  mental  needs  of  those 
who  turned  to  Him  for  help,  caused  Him  at  first 
and  most  frequently  to  perform  a  miracle ;  next 
to  that,  the  perception  of  a  faith  on  the  part  of  sup- 
pliants which  He  sought  to  raise  to  some  higher 
level  by  granting  their  request.  The  Kingdom  of 
God,  which  He  was  conscious  of  heralding,  had 
its  complete  realisation  for  Him,  not  only  in  re- 
moving the  feeling  of  distance  from  God  and 
annulling  the   moral  woes  of  man,  but   also   in 


222  THE  PERSON  OF 

liberating  men  from  evil  and  death,  and  in  a  per- 
fect transfiguration  and  re-creation  of  the  world, 
where  sin,  evil,  and  death  would  have  no  more 
place,  but  where  the  purpose  of  God  for  men 
would  be  for  ever  attained.  From  this  point  of 
view,  the  miracles  of  Jesus  were  to  Him,  as  they 
are  still  to  us,  prophetic  deeds  by  which  He  who 
inaugurated  the  Heavenly  Kingdom  guaranteed  its 
final  and  eternal  perfection  at  the  very  moment  of 
its  establishment. 

3.  The  Resurrection  of  Jesus 

The  question  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  alone 
remains.  In  discussing  it  we  touch  on  the  one 
hand  one  of  the  central  foundations  of  the  Christian 
certainty  of  salvation,  and  on  the  other  we  raise 
one  point  where  Science  would  have  had  the  right 
and  duty  to  contradict  the  fact  in  question,  did 
not  Jesus  in  His  Person,  as  in  His  career,  stand 
out  unique  among  men,  and  were  not  the  proofs 
of  the  reality  of  His  Resurrection  of  overpowering 
weight. 

To  begin  with,  there  is  one  proven  historical 
fact,  sublime  and  indubitable,  viz.  that  all  the 
preaching  of  that  Gospel  with  which  the  apostles 


JESUS  CHRIST  223 

and  their  co-workers  and  successors  went  to  the 
world,  culminated  in  the  proclamation  of  two 
facts  as  the  foundation  of  man's  assurance  of 
salvation  :  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God  Our  Lord 
and  Master,  has  died,  and  is  risen  again  for  us.  By 
this  they  did  not  mean  the  beginning  of  another 
and  a  blessed  life  after  death,  as  was  the  hope  for 
all  who  had  lived  a  holy  life.  No  missionary  or 
martyr  zeal  could  they  have  drawn  from  that. 
What  they  understood  by  the  Resurrection  was 
the  real  and  complete  victory  over  death  which 
Jesus  gained  on  Good  Friday  by  His  innocence 
and  voluntary  obedience  to  the  will  of  His 
Heavenly  Father,  a  victory  which  consisted  in 
the  revivifying  of  His  dead  body  to  a  glorified  and 
heavenly  existence  which  was  for  ever  safe  from 
mortality,  a  victory  in  which  Jesus  showed  Him- 
self the  conqueror  of  all  that  is  called  sin  and 
death,  Lord  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  one  Who 
gives  His  Holy  Spirit  to  those  who  believe  on 
Him,  and  one  Who  is  with  them  always  even  unto 
the  end  of  the  world,  directing  the  Kingdom  of 
God  to  its  final  perfecting. 

The  success  which  attended  this  preaching  of 
a  Gospel  in  which  the  proclamation  of  the  Resur- 


224.  THE  PERSON  OF 

rection  of  Jesus,  side  by  side  with  the  proclamation 
of  His  Crucifixion,  formed  the  central  point,  has 
been  of  unparalleled  significance  in  the  history  of 
mankind.  Hitherto,  indeed,  it  has  penetrated 
with  success  only  to  one  third  of  mankind,  but  still 
with  unabated,  and  in  fact  increasing  impetus,  it 
continues  its  missionary  activity  throughout  the 
world.  Despite  the  horrors  which  illegitimate 
appeals  to  religion  and  Christianity  produced  ere 
long  within  their  national  life,  the  nations  which 
accepted  Christianity  have  attained  the  highest 
level  of  civilisation  on  earth.  And  millions  upon 
millions  of  individuals  who  have  truly  and  inwardly 
appropriated  Christianity,  are  thereby  endowed 
with  the  forgiveness  of  sins,  sonship  towards  God, 
and  eternal  life — a  veritable  treasure  of  spiritual 
blessing,  which  is  allied  to  an  ever-increasing 
moral  power  and  purity  and  activity,  such  as  no 
other  religion  that  has  ever  appeared  in  the  world 
offers  to  its  adherents.  Here,  if  anywhere,  are 
Jesus's  words  valid:  "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know 
them".  In  face  of  this  noblest  and  most  precious 
of  all  fruits  on  the  tree  of  mankind,  the  vital  growth 
of  the  gospel  of  Jesus's  Death  and  Resurrection, 
we  are  entitled  to  ask :  Is  this  faith  of  the  disciples 


JESUS  CHRIST  225 

in  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  founded  on  real  historical 
facti  on  the  real  awakening  of  Jesus  from  the  grave, 
in  the  sense  in  which  we  have  already  defined  it  ? 

At  the  outset,  we  must  premise  that  the  Resur- 
rection of  Jesus  is  not  such  a  generally  recognised 
fact  as  the  murder  of  Julius  Caesar,  or  the  battle 
of  Leipzig.  We  cannot  and  must  not  expect  that, 
when  we  consider  the  way  in  which  God  generally 
reveals  Himself  and  His  salvation  to  mankind. 
We  have  already  had  occasion  to  refer  to  the  fact 
that  in  all  the  crucial  questions  of  life,  God  is 
either  a  hidden  or  a  revealed  God,  according  to 
man's  attitude  to  Him.  The  recognition  of  God 
and  of  His  saving  work  cannot  be  the  logical  result 
of  observations  which  man  could  not  deny,  even  if 
he  wished  to ;  it  must  be  a  free  ethical  act  of  the 
inner  man, — of  the  soul.  If  this  act  is  accom- 
plished, then  man  sees  himself  surrounded  by 
revelations  of  God  and  by  proofs  that  his  faith  is 
true.  But  any  one  who  chooses  to  refuse  to  recog- 
nise God  and  His  work  of  salvation,  is  at  liberty 
to  do  so  ;  he  can  give  reasons  for  it,  and,  if  he 
has  the  necessary  mental  equipment,  he  can  build 
these  up   into  a  regular  scientific  system.     The 

latter  process,  e.g.  in  reference  to  the  question  of 

15 


226  THE  PERSON  OF 

the  Resurrection,  has  been  followed  by  Strauss  in 
his  two  versions  of  The  Life  of  Jesus,  and  in  his 
Old  and  New  Faith,  which  gives  us  his  entire  view 
of  the  world  in  compact  compass.  He  does  not 
shrink  from  summing  up  his  results  in  the  follow- 
ing words  (second  ed.,  p.  72  ff.).  "  Viewed  his- 
torically, i.e.,  when  the  vast  effects  of  this  faith 
are  correlated  with  its  utter  baselessness,  the  story 
of  the  Resurrection  may  be  described  as  a  humbug 
in  the  history  of  the  world."  From  any  one  who 
confesses  to  such  a  philosophy  of  history,  which 
regards  the  greatest  achievements  of  mankind  as 
developed  from  a  "  historical  humbug,"  we  must 
part  company,  of  course  ;  he  and  we  can  have  no 
common  ground  of  understanding. 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  news  of  Jesus's  Resur- 
rection did  not  possess  the  same  degree  of  certainty 
as,  e.g.,  the  news  of  His  crucifixion.  The  reason 
lies  in  the  facts  of  the  case.  Death  is  a  fate 
which  all  men  experience  ;  the  Resurrection,  as 
it  is  related  of  Jesus,  is  something  which  no  one 
but  He  has  experienced.  His  Death  upon  the 
cross  was  suffered  openly  before  all  the  people  ; 
He  was  accused  by  the  Jewish  and  condemned 
by   the   Roman   authorities.     But   as  risen   from 


JESUS  CHRIST  227 

the  dead,  He  showed  Himself  only  to  His  faithful 
ones  and  to  these  only  at  separate  intervals. 
This  difference  also  corresponds  to  a  difference 
in  the  accounts  of  the  Resurrection.  The  record 
of  Jesus's  death  in  the  four  gospels,  all  composed 
a  considerable  time  after  His  death,  is  itself 
not  absolutely  identical.  The  gospels  have  their 
small  points  of  divergence  ;  even  on  the  question 
of  the  day  of  His  death  the  synoptic  gospels 
(Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke,  on  account  of  their 
many  similarities,  are  classed  as  such)  do  not 
agree  with  the  Gospel  of  John.  But  these  diver- 
gences would  by  no  means  justify  a  denial  of  the 
fact  of  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus.  The  account  of 
Jesus's  resurrection  permits,  however,  the  possi- 
bility of  such  denial,  though  this,  of  course,  in- 
volves great  violence  to  the  meaning  and  contents 
of  the  record,  and  heavy  loss  to  the  saving  grace 
enjoyed  by  mankind,  as  well  as  to  the  intelligent 
understanding  of  history. 

The  oldest  account  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
does  not  come  from  the  gospels,  but  from  the 
fifteenth  chapter  of  the  first  epistle  written  by 
Paul  (about  the  year  57  A.D.)  to  the  Christian 
Church  at  Corinth,  whose  genuineness  is  beyond 
all  question.     The  information  of  this  letter  has 


228  THE  PERSON  OF 

this  advantage  over  the  gospels,  that  it  goes 
farther  back  ;  it  is  an  historical  source  of  primary 
importance,  because  Paul  received  his  news  from 
real  eye-witnesses  of  the  appearances  of  the  Risen 
One,  who,  at  the  time  at  which  he  wrote  the 
letter,  were  for  the  most  part  living.  The  gospels, 
though  composed  later  than  the  First  Epistle  to 
the  Corinthians,  have  this  advantage  over  it,  that 
they  give  us  vivid  accounts  of  the  appearances 
of  the  Risen  One,  whilst  Paul  gives  only  an 
enumeration,  not  an  account.  Yet  on  the  score 
of  its  dependence  upon  real  eye-witnesses  of  these 
appearances,  this  mere  enumeration  retains  a 
value  of  its  own. 

The  account  given  by  Paul  in  i  Corinthians 
xv.  3-8,  runs  in  the  main  as  follows  :  Christ  died 
for  our  sins,  was  buried,  rose  again  on  the  third 
day,  was  seen  of  Peter,  then  of  the  twelve,  after- 
wards by  more  than  500  brethren  at  once,  of 
whom  the  greater  part  at  the  time  of  the  composi- 
tion of  this  letter  were  still  living,  afterwards  by 
James  (probably  the  Lord's  brother) — who  though 
formerly  unbelieving  took  a  prominent  part  in  the 
early  Church,  and  is  probably  also  the  author  of 
the  Epistle  of  James — ,  then  of  all  the  Apostles, 


JESUS  CHRIST  229 

perhaps  a  larger  number  than  the  twelve,  or 
rather  the  eleven,  known  to  us,  since  Judas  had 
become  a  traitor.  Finally  he  was  seen  by  Paul 
himself.  By  this  last  appearance  Paul  can  only 
have  meant  the  appearance  of  Jesus  in  light  on 
the  road  to  Damascus. 

From  the  circumstance  that  Paul  expressly 
mentions  the  burial  of  Jesus  and  puts  the  burial 
and  the  resurrection  "  on  the  third  day  "  close  to- 
gether, we  must  infer  that  according  to  the  account 
which  Paul  gathered  from  the  eye-witnesses,  Jesus 
was  seen  alive  on  Easter  Sunday  and  the  grave 
found  empty.  When  he  mentions  the  appearance 
of  the  Risen  Jesus  to  himself  before  Damascus, 
some  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus,  in  connection 
with  the  appearances  of  the  Risen  One  in  the 
year  of  His  death,  it  does  not  follow,  as  some 
conclude,  that  all  the  appearances  of  Jesus  were 
subjective  visions,  but  vice  versa  that  Paul,  who 
was  convinced  that  all  the  reported  appearances 
of  the  Risen  One  were  really  objective  events, 
did  not  look  upon  even  the  appearance  before 
Damascus  as  merely  a  subjective  vision  due  to 
the  will  and  power  of  God.  It  was  not  upon 
the  same  level  as,  e.g.,  the  vision  of  the  man  from 


230  THE  PERSON  OF 

Macedonia  who  called  him  (Acts  xvi.  9)  to  Mace- 
donia. Nay,  he  was  persuaded  that  the  Risen 
and  ascended  Jesus  had  personally  appeared  to 
him  as  formerly  He  had  to  the  apostles. 

Rather  different  from  this  report  of  Paul's  are 
the  accounts  which  the  four  Evangelists  give  of 
the  Resurrection  and  His  appearances ;  nor  do 
they  agree  among  themselves.  I  may  assume 
that  these  are  familiar  to  the  reader,  but  I  must 
group  them  according  to  their  division  in  the  four 
gospels  if  I  am  to  make  their  mutual  discrepancies 
clear.  As  the  Gospel  of  Mark  is  probably  the 
oldest,  I  begin  with  it. 

According  to  the  Gospel  of  Mark,  which  in  its 
original  form  ceases  with  the  eighth  verse  of  the 
sixteenth  chapter,  the  three  women,  Mary  Magda- 
lene, Mary  the  mother  of  James,  and  Salome  came 
with  spices  to  the  grave,  early  in  the  morning, 
found  the  stone  rolled  away,  and  in  the  empty 
grave  a  youth  in  white  apparel,  who  said  to  them, 
"  Jesus  is  risen  ".  They  were  to  tell  the  disciples 
and  Peter  that  Jesus  would  go  before  them  to 
Galilee  and  that  there  they  would  see  Him.  They 
hastened  forth  and  said  nothing  to  any  one  for  they 
were  afraid. 


JESUS  CHRIST  231 

Verses  9-20,  which  are  wanting  in  the  oldest 
manuscript,  are  probably  a  later  addition.  They 
relate  that  when  Jesus  had  risen  from  the  dead 
early  on  Easter  Sunday,  He  appeared  first  to  Mary 
Magdalene.  She  told  His  disciples,  but  they  did 
not  believe  her.  Afterwards  He  revealed  Him- 
self in  another  form  to  two  who  were  walking 
in  the  country.  These  told  others,  but  they  too 
believed  them  not.  Finally  as  the  eleven  sat  at 
table  He  revealed  Himself  to  them,  upbraided  them 
for  their  unbelief,  ordered  them  to  preach  the 
Gospel  to  every  creature  and  to  baptise,  and  pro- 
mised the  believers  miraculous  gifts ;  then  the 
Lord,  after  He  had  spoken  with  them,  was  taken 
up  to  Heaven  to  sit  at  the  Right  Hand  of  God.  Of 
the  place  and  time  of  this  last  appearance  nothing 
is  said. 

According  to  the  Gospel  of  Matthew,  Mary 
Magdalene  and  the  other  Mary  came  on  Easter 
morning  to  the  grave.  An  earthquake  occurred, 
the  angel  of  the  Lord  came  down  from  Heaven, 
rolled  away  the  stone  from  the  door  of  the  grave, 
and  sat  upon  it.  The  keepers  of  the  grave  fell 
down  fainting.  The  angel  announced  to  the 
women  that  Jesus  was  risen,  and  that  they  should 


232  THE  PERSON  OF 

tell  His  disciples  that  Jesus  would  go  before  them 
into  Galilee,  where  they  would  see  Him.  Now 
as  the  women  hastened  forth  to  tell  it  to  His 
disciples,  Jesus  met  and  greeted  them.  They 
fell  down  and  embraced  His  feet.  Then  Jesus 
said,  "  Be  not  afraid  :  go  tell  My  brethren  that 
they  go  into  Galilee,  and  there  shall  they  see  Me. 
.  .  .  Then  the  eleven  disciples  went  away  into 
Galilee,  into  a  mountain  where  Jesus  had  appointed 
them.  And  when  they  saw  Him,  they  worshipped 
Him  :  but  some  doubted.  And  Jesus  came  and 
spake  unto  them,  saying,  All  power  is  given  unto 
Me  in  Heaven  and  in  Earth.  Go  ye  therefore,  and 
make  disciples  of  all  nations,  baptising  them  in 
the  name  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy 
Ghost ;  teaching  them  to  observe  all  things  what- 
soever I  have  commanded  you :  and,  lo,  I  am 
with  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of  the  world, 
Amen." 

According  to  Luke,  Mary  Magdalene,  Joanna, 
Mary  the  mother  of  James,  and  others  with  them 
came  early  to  the  grave  on  Easter  morning  with 
spices,  only  to  find  the  stone  rolled  away  and  the 
grave  empty.  Thereupon  two  men  in  shining 
garments  stood  by  them,  who  told  them  of  the 


JESUS  CHRIST  233 

Resurrection  of  Jesus  and  reminded  them  of  what 
He  had  told  them.  They  now  left  the  grave  and 
related  what  had  occurred  to  the  disciples,  but 
their  words  seemed  to  them  as  idle  tales  and  they 
believed  them  not.  Peter  ran  to  the  grave,  saw 
the  linen  clothes  laid  by  themselves,  and  departed, 
wondering  in  himself  at  that  which  was  come  to 
pass.  The  latter  words  are  not  to  be  found  in  all 
the  manuscripts. 

Now  follows  the  very  circumstantial  account 
of  the  walk  of  the  two  disciples  to  Emmaus,  to 
whom  the  Risen  One  joined  Himself  When 
they  returned  to  Jerusalem,  in  order  to  tell  this 
to  the  eleven,  they  were  met  by  these  words  : 
"  The  Lord  is  risen  indeed  and  has  appeared 
unto  Simon  ".  Then  Jesus  came  into  their 
midst  saying,  "  Peace  be  unto  you  ".  "  But 
they  were  terrified  and  affrighted  and  supposed 
that  they  had  seen  a  spirit."  Jesus  allayed 
their  fears  and  invited  them  to  feel  His  hands 
and  His  feet  and  "  while  they  yet  believed 
not  for  joy  and  wondered,  He  said  unto  them, 
Have  ye  here  any  meat  ?  And  they  gave  Him  a 
piece  of  a  broiled  fish  and  of  an  honeycomb.  And 
He  took  it  and  did  eat  before  them.     Thereafter 


234  THE  PERSON  OF 

He  opened  their  understanding  that  they  might 
understand  the  Scriptures,  and  said  unto  them, 
Thus  it  is  written,  and  thus  it  behoved  Christ  to 
suffer,  and  to  rise  from  the  dead  the  third  day  :  and 
that  repentance  and  remission  of  sins  should  be 
preached  in  His  name  among  all  nations,  beginning 
at  Jerusalem  :  .  .  .  but  tarry  ye  in  Jerusalem,  until 
ye  be  endued  with  power  from  on  high.  Then 
He  led  them  out  as  far  as  to  Bethany;  and  He 
lifted  up  His  hands,  and  blessed  them.  And  it 
came  to  pass,  while  He  blessed  them,  He  was 
parted  from  them,  and  carried  up  into  heaven." 

The  Gospel  of  John  was  perhaps  written  last  of 
all ;  but  its  report  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  con- 
tains a  peculiar  amount  of  suggestive  detail,  and 
some  narratives  that  are  quite  wanting  in  the  three 
synoptics.  The  gospel  is  denied  by  most  scholars 
to  be  the  work  of  the  Apostle  John.  If  they  are 
right,  the  obvious  course  is  to  attribute  these  more 
concrete  and  novel  traits  to  the  pious  fancy  of  tra- 
dition. But  since  so  thorough  and  well-informed 
a  scholar  as  Beyschlag  maintains,  on  weighty 
grounds,  the  high  probability  that  the  Apostle 
John  himself  really  wrote  the  gospel  in  his  ad- 
vanced  age,  we   must   consider   it   possible   that 


JESUS  CHRIST  235 

Beyschlag  is  right  In  that  event,  the  accounts 
given  by  John  naturally  assume  quite  a  different 
significance.  It  is  an  ear  and  eye  witness  of  the 
highest  authority,  who  in  part  corroborates,  in 
part  completes,  and  in  part  corrects  what  the 
synoptists  related. 

According  to  John,  Mary  Magdalene  came  early 
on  the  morning  of  Easter  Sunday,  found  the  stone 
rolled  away,  and  the  grave  empty ;  and  then  ran 
to  Peter  and  John  and  complained  to  them : 
"  They  have  taken  away  the  Lord  from  the  grave, 
and  we  know  not  where  they  have  laid  Him  ". 
The  two  disciples  went  to  the  grave,  found  it 
empty,  saw  only  the  linen  clothes  and  the  napkin 
that  was  about  His  head,  and  went  away  home. 
Mary  now  returned  and  stood  weeping  at  the  sepul- 
chre, when  she  saw  two  angels  within  who  spoke 
to  her  sympathetically.  As  she  looked  back  she 
saw  Jesus  standing  and  at  first  supposed  Him  to 
be  the  gardener,  but  recognised  Him  when  He  ad- 
dressed her  with  the  word  "  Mary  !  "  Then  He 
said  to  her  "  Touch  Me  not ;  for  I  am  not  yet 
ascended  to  My  Father :  but  go  to  My  brethren, 
and  say  unto  them,  I  ascend  unto  My  Father,  and 
your  Father ;  and  to   My  God,  and  your   God  ". 


236  THE  PERSON  OF 

Mary  now  went  and  told  the  disciples.  On  the 
evening  of  the  same  Easter  Sunday,  when  the 
disciples  were  gathered  together  and  the  doors 
were  shut  for  fear  of  the  Jews,  Jesus  came  into 
their  midst  saying,  "  Peace  be  unto  you,"  showed 
them  His  hands  and  feet  and  side,  and  said  to 
them,  "As  the  Father  hath  sent  Me,  even  so 
send  I  you ".  Then  He  breathed  on  them  and 
gave  them  the  Holy  Spirit  for  the  remission  or 
retention  of  sins.  Thomas  was  not  with  them, 
and  he  refused  to  believe  what  his  fellow  apostles 
related,  unless  he  could  lay  his  finger  in  the 
print  of  the  nails  and  the  side  of  Jesus.  After 
eight  days  the  disciples  were  again  gathered 
together,  and  Thomas  with  them.  Then  Jesus 
came  again,  the  doors  being  shut  and  said,  "  Peace 
be  unto  you,"  let  Thomas  lay  his  hands  in  the 
print  of  the  nails  and  in  His  side,  and  upbraided 
him  for  his  unbelief.  And  Thomas  answered  and 
said,  "  My  Lord  and  my  God  !  "  In  a  supplement, 
chapter  xxi.  tells  of  the  appearance  of  Jesus  to  seven 
disciples,  among  them  Peter  and  John  on  the  lake 
of  Genesareth,  of  the  plentiful  draught  of  fishes, 
of  Peter's  re-establishment  in  his  apostleship,  and 
of  the  prophecies  of  Jesus  about  the  future  of  Peter 
and  John. 


JESUS  CHRIST  237 

These  are  in  essence  the  contents  of  the  biblical 
record  of  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  and  His  differ- 
ent appearances.  Their  differences,  together  with 
the  abruptness  and  variety  of  the  appearances  of 
Jesus,  and  their  distribution  over  Jerusalem  and 
its  environs  and  Galilee,  together  with  the  (lif- 
erent intervals  of  time  between  the  events  and 
their  record,  are  at  first  sight  far  from  surprising. 
Any  one  would  allow  that  such  discrepancies  in 
the  accounts  were  not  inexplicable ;  he  would  be 
persuaded  that  from  these  different  reports  some 
sequence  of  events  could  quite  well  be  inferred,  in 
which  each  of  the  narratives  would  find  its  place, 
with  slight  modifications,  of  course,  here  and 
there.  He  would  think  so,  if  the  events  related 
were  analogous  to  the  rest  of  human  experience. 
But  this  is  not  the  case.  These  stories  are  a 
report  of  something  that  stands  in  contradiction 
to  the  fate  of  all  other  men  ;  they  describe  the 
change  of  a  dead  man's  body  into  a  new  and  glori- 
fied one,  no  longer  subject  to  death.  This  contra- 
diction of  all  experience  has  elicited  attempts  to 
explain  the  appearances  of  Jesus  after  His  death, 
without  denying  the  corruption  of  His  body. 

For   a   long   time   the   so-called  hypothesis  of 


238  THE  PERSON  OF 

"  vision  "  was  the  only  attempt  of  this  class.  The 
recorded  appearances  of  the  Risen  One  were  traced 
to  visions,  i.e.,  to  a  subjective  experience  of  the 
human  soul,  leaving  it  an  open  question  whether 
the  thing  seen  is  only  an  involuntary  product  of 
the  soul  that  sees,  or  is  occasioned  by  something 
objective  in  the  unseen  world.  Every  one,  on 
this  hypothesis,  would  have  the  choice,  according 
to  his  mental  standpoint,  of  either  the  former  or 
the  latter  interpretation  of  the  vision.  Scientists 
who  reject  a  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus's 
body,  have  recently  begun  to  emphasise  the  objec- 
tive reality  of  His  appearances  to  such  a  degree 
that  their  view  goes  far  beyond  the  conception  of 
"vision"  in  ordinary  terminology.  This  is  done 
with  the  view  of  discarding  the  Resurrection  of 
Jesus's  body  but  at  the  same  time  of  holding  fast 
by  a  glorified  Heavenly  existence,  together  with 
the  reality  of  Jesus's  continued  existence  after  His 
crucifixion,  the  reality  of  His  appearances  to  the 
disciples,  and  the  reality  of  His  continuous  personal 
influence  upon  the  kingdom  of  God,  of  which  He 
is  the  abiding  Head. 

The   need   for   this   has    been   expressed   with 
especial  warmth  and  depth  in  some  lectures  by 


JESUS  CHRIST  2S9 

Rev.  Rudolf  Otto  on  the  Life  and  Work  of  Jesus, 
according  to  Historical  Criticism  (Göttingen,  Van- 
denhoeck  &  Rupprecht,  first  ed.,  1902).  The 
aspects  which  fall  to  be  considered  under  the 
problem  of  the  bodily  resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ, 
are  ably  and  clearly  presented  by  Max  Reischle 
in  the  weekly  journal  Die  Christliche  Welt  (No.  1, 
4th  Jan.,  1900).  The  same  journal  contains  in 
No.  23,  8th  June,  1905,  a  highly  readable  at- 
tempt at  a  solution  in  this  direction  by  Gustav 
Wepfer  :  "The  Appearances  of  the  Risen  Lord 
Regarded  from  the  Standpoint  of  Scientific 
Psychological  ".  According  to  Wepfer,  the  Risen 
Christ,  in  purely  spiritual  form,  entered  into  com- 
munication with  the  spirit  of  the  disciples,  in 
whose  soul,  without  any  co-operation  of  ether 
vibrations  or  air-waves,  without  the  mediation  of 
any  physical  apparatus  of  sight  and  hearing,  and 
without  the  co-operation  of  their  material  nerve 
apparatus,  the  very  same  sensations  of  seeing 
and  hearing  arose  as  were  wont  to  appear  under 
ordinary  circumstances  in  their  souls  by  the  im- 
pressions of  the  material  and  outward  world  upon 
their  senses  and  nervous  system.  In  consequence 
of  this  spiritual  connection  of  the  Risen  One  with 


240  THE  PERSON  OF 

the  quickened  souls  of  His  disciples,  they  really 
saw  with  their  mental  eye  the  sublime  and  gracious 
form  of  their  Saviour,  and  really  heard  the  well- 
known  sound  of  His  voice  with  their  mental  ear. 
But,  as  they  could  not  comprehend  in  a  correct 
scientific  way,  the  peculiar  seat  and  substance  of 
these  experiences,  they  could  not  but  have  the  firm, 
immovable  conviction  that  they  had  really  seen 
their  Lord  and  Saviour  with  their  own  eyes,  and 
had  heard  Him  speak  with  their  own  ears. 

This  solution,  however,  like  the  attempt  made 
by  the  hypothesis  of  "vision,"  is  impossible  with- 
out some  historical  tour  de  force,  to  which,  in  the 
case  of  the  hypothesis  of  vision,  a  psychological 
tour  de  force  must  be  added. 

The  historical  tour  de  force  consists  in  this,  that 
one  must  set  aside  the  empty  grave.  For  all 
attempts  to  give  a  natural  explanation  of  the 
empty  grave,  whether  on  the  ground  that  the 
disciples  secretly  put  away  the  body  (see  Matt, 
xxviii.  13)  in  order  afterwards  to  be  able  to  say 
that  Jesus  was  risen,  or  on  the  supposition  that 
the  Crucified  was  only  apparently  dead  and  woke 
again  in  the  coolness  of  the  grave,  from  which 
He   went    to    His    disciples — all    such    are    too 


JESUS  CHRIST  241 

monstrous  to  deserve  serious  refutation.  In  order 
to  be  able  to  set  aside  the  accounts  of  the  empty 
grave  as  unhistorical,  Weizsäcker  in  his  Apostolic 
Age,  and  Professor  Arnold  Meyer,  who  enters 
into  more  detail,  in  his  Resurrection  of  Christ  (Tüb- 
ingen, Mohr,  1905),  make  all  the  disciples — in 
contradiction  to  the  gospel  narratives — flee  to 
Galilee  after  the  crucifixion  ;  hence  all  the  appear- 
ances of  Jesus  take  place  in  Galilee.  Thus  there 
would  certainly  be  no  immediate  occasion  for 
going  to  see  the  grave  and  corpse  of  Jesus.  But 
though  we  ignore  what  is  said  about  the  women 
and  disciples  going  to  the  grave,  the  words  of 
Paul  in  1  Corinthians  xv.  4  cannot  be  ignored, 
according  to  which  Jesus  rose  on  the  third  day, 
i.e.,  after  the  ancient  reckoning,  on  Easter  Sun- 
day. This  implies  that  He  must  have  been  seen 
by  the  disciples  on  that  day.  Now  even  had 
they  fled  ever  so  quickly,  they  could  not  have 
reached  Galilee  in  time  for  Jesus  to  have  appeared 
to  them  there  on  Easter  Sunday.  Besides,  the 
assertion  that  the  disciples  immediately  fled  after 
Jesus  was  crucified,  has  no  historical,  much  less 
any  psychological,  basis.     In  Matthew  and  Mark 

there    is   the    contrary   assertion  of  the  message 

16 


242  THE  PERSON  OF 

given  by  the  angels  to  the  women,  that  "  they 
were  to  go  before  Him  into  Galilee".  If  the 
flight  of  the  disciples  to  Galilee  had  begun  on  the 
evening  of  Good  Friday  the  message  ought  to 
have  run,  "  Jesus  will  follow  you  into  Galilee  ". 

But,  great  as  is  the  historical  tour  de  force  in  the 
vision  "hypothesis,"  the  psychological  tour  de  force 
is  just  as  great.  In  order  to  explain  the  dismay 
of  the  disciples  after  the  Crucifixion  of  their 
Master,  with  its  rapid  and  sudden  change  into  a 
state  of  mind  which  caused  the  Crucified  to  appear 
as  the  Risen  One,  one  is  obliged  to  have  recourse 
to  a  very  complicated  and  well-nigh  incredible 
historical  reconstruction.  But  when  we  further 
find  that  not  only  the  gospels,  but  also  Paul  (in 
i  Corinthians  xv.),  report  that  Jesus  appeared 
several  times,  once  indeed  to  more  than  500  per- 
sons at  once  ;  when  we  learn  that  Jesus  spoke 
with  them,  and  gave  them  orders — then  objective 
appearances  of  the  Risen  One  are  the  sole  ade- 
quate basis  for  understanding  how  the  Apostles 
came  to  be  conscious  of  having  received  such  com- 
mands, or  how  they  carried  them  out  with  so 
conspicuous  and  epoch-making  a  success. 

Moreover  there    is  the  fact    that    Christendom 


JESUS  CHRIST  243 

changed  its  day  of  rest  from  Saturday  to  Sunday. 
This  innovation,  so  momentous  in  the  history  of 
religion,  is  most  simply  explained  by  the  further 
fact  that  it  was  on  Easter  Sunday  that  the  disciples 
saw  the  Risen  One  first,  and  therefore  that  from 
the  very  outset  they  made  Sunday,  as  the  "  Lord's 
Day,"  a  "  Day  of  Rest  "  as  well  as  of  assembling 
together.  As  Jews,  they  still  kept  the  Sabbath,  so 
they  had  two  days  of  rest  in  the  week  of  seven 
days.  But  this  could  not  long  continue  ;  one  of  the 
rest-days  had  to  be  given  up.  After  the  experience 
of  the  Resurrection  of  their  Lord,  they  had  no 
longer  any  doubt  which  they  would  decide  upon 
— the  Sabbath  had  to  give  place  to  the  "  Lord's 
Day  " — the  last  day  to  the  first  day  of  the  week. 

One  fact  which  we  must  admit,  and  for  which 
we  also  must  try  to  find  some  explanation,  is  that 
many  earnest  and  esteemed  Christians  oppose  be- 
lief in  the  bodily  resurrection  of  Jesus  from  the 
grave.  In  addition  to  the  above-named  scholars 
we  must  reckon,  among  others,  the  eminent  and 
in  many  respects  pioneering  theologian,  Adolf 
Harnack,  in  this  class.  He  says,  in  What  is 
Christianity  ?  "  If  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  means 
nothing  else  than  the  resuscitation  of  a  dead  body 


244  THE  PERSON  OF 

of  flesh  and  blood,  we  should  make  short  work  of 
such  a  tradition  ". 

There  seem  to  me  to  be  two  tendencies  which 
combine  to  make  the  Resurrection  of  the  body  of 
Jesus  to  a  new  and  glorified  heavenly  life,  impos- 
sible and  therefore  unhistorical.  One  is  the  con- 
viction of  the  inviolability  of  the  laws  of  Nature ; 
the  other,  the  tendency  which  has  been  prominent 
for  about  a  century,  to  dwell  on  the  human  rather 
than  on  the  Divine  side  of  the  nature  of  Jesus. 

As  regards  the  latter,  in  connection  with  the 
more  anthropological  side  of  our  Christology,  it 
must  be  admitted  that,  for  about  seventeen  cen- 
turies after  the  rise  of  Christianity,  the  Divine 
side  of  Jesus  was  studied  to  the  detriment  of  the 
human  in  too  one-sided  a  fashion ;  there  is  ample 
justification  nowadays,  therefore,  for  the  increasing 
emphasis  on,  and  study  of,  His  humanity.  Not 
only  our  historical  knowledge,  but  also  our  piety, 
cannot  fail  to  profit  by  this.  The  latter  has 
already  derived  unspeakable  advantage  from  this 
movement,  and  will  continue  to  do  so.  But  the 
advent  of  a  new  tendency,  which  is  perfectly 
justifiable  in  itself,  involves  a  danger  of  preci- 
pitancy.    Many  writers  seem  to  me  to  be  exposed 


JESUS  CHRIST  245 

to  this  peril,  inasmuch  as  they  now  emphasise  the 
human  side  of  Jesus  in  a  one-sided  fashion,  rele- 
gating the  unique  and  divine  element  to  the  back- 
ground, if  they  do  not  ignore  it  altogether. 

As  soon  as  one  places  Jesus  unreservedly  in  the 
ranks  of  other  men,  even  if  one  names  Him  the 
greatest  religious  genius  that  has  ever  appeared, 
it  is  perfectly  plain  that  one  must  allow  Him  to 
have  shared  the  fate  of  death  and  corruption  com- 
mon to  all  men.  But  as  soon  as  one  does,  as 
Christendom  has  rightly  done  till  now,  though  oc- 
casionally with  an  exaggerated  emphasis  on  meta- 
physical definitions  of  the  Divine  Essence  of  Jesus  ; 
I  mean,  as  soon  as  one  sees  in  Jesus  some  One 
unique,  One  Who  alone  could  inaugurate  a  new 
and  higher  stage  of  existence  for  humanity,  One 
Who  brings  reconciliation  with  God,  Redemption 
from  Sin  and  Death,  Sonship  with  God,  and  Eter- 
nal Life — then  one  has  no  right  to  deny  facts  that 
are  related  of  Him  in  a  trustworthy  manner,  be- 
cause they  do  not  agree  with  the  life  and  experience 
of  other  men.  For  Jesus,  although  a  true  Man, 
is  "  Son  of  God  "  uniquely,  as  He  is  unique  in  His 
humanity,  not  isolated  thereby  from  the  rest  of 
men,  but  the  Representative  of  true  humanity,  as 


246  THE  PERSON  OF 

it  should  be,  the  Head  of  a  new  and  regenerate 
humanity,  the  Head  of  the  children  of  God  in  the 
Kingdom  of  God  which  He  has  Himself  founded. 

The  inviolability  of  the  laws  of  Nature  remains 
valid  even  for  those  who  believe  in  the  Resurrec- 
tion of  Jesus,  not  only  in  the  sense  that,  so  long 
as  the  present  course  of  the  world  lasts,  the  law 
of  death  and  corruption  holds  good  for  all  other 
men,  but  also  in  the  sense  that,  even  in  what 
happened  to  Jesus  at  His  Resurrection,  the  law  of 
the  conservation  of  energy  and  matter  has  not  been 
put  aside ;  what  He  experienced  was  a  new  and 
hitherto  non-existent  revelation  of  enormous  im- 
port for  the  future  of  mankind  and  of  the  universe. 
For  Jesus,  when  raised  to  a  glorified  existence,  ex- 
perienced exactly  what  the  whole  Creation  will  ex- 
perience when  it  is  changed  from  its  transient  and 
vain  estate,  as  the  Bible  calls  it,  to  the  state  of 
glory. 

The  theological  tendency  which  doubts  or  de- 
nies the  bodily  Resurrection  of  Jesus,  does  appear 
at  first  sight  to  have  gained  the  upper  hand  in  our 
own  day  ;  but  it  will  certainly  be  replaced  by  a  ten- 
dency  of  thought  which  returns  to  the  affirmation 
of  the  Easter  message  in  the  full  sense  in  which  it 


JESUS  CHRIST  247 

has  been  proclaimed  and  believed  from  the  begin- 
ning. Christendom  cannot  long  endure  that  im- 
poverishment of  its  religious  inheritance,  which  is 
involved  in  the  deposition  of  Jesus  from  the  unique- 
ness of  His  Divine  Sonship.  To-day,  more  than 
ever,  it  must  decline  such  an  impoverishment.  For 
in  addition  to  the  old  and  by  no  means  antiquated 
reasons  for  upholding  the  physical  Resurrection  of 
Jesus,  the  development  of  different  views  of  the 
world  (a  development  which  is  essentially  due  to 
the  expansion  of  our  knowledge  of  the  universe 
and  to  modern  speculation)  has  given  rise  to  yet 
further  reasons  based  on  biblical  and  especially  on 
Pauline  ideas.  The  old  reasons,  which  will  always 
form  an  essential  part  of  the  basis  for  our  Christian 
faith,  are  simply  these :  that  the  victory  of  Jesus 
over  death  is  guaranteed,  and  our  conviction  of 
the  Righteousness  of  God  satisfied,  only  if  Jesus 
in  no  way  remained  a  prey  to  the  death  which 
He  suffered  innocently  for  our  sakes.  The  new 
reasons  are  these,  that  the  bodily  Resurrection  of 
Jesus  throws  a  new  light  on  the  whole  course  of 
the  world.  It  guarantees  for  us  a  future  glorifica- 
tion of  the  world  in  a  new  existence,  in  which  what 
is  to-day  imperfect,   and   apparently  purposeless, 


248  THE  PERSON  OF 

finds  its  solution,  in  which  the  riddle  of  the  uni- 
verse is  solved,  in  which  the  universe  finds  a 
goal.  Even  the  old  question  why  good  and  evil 
exist  in  the  world — a  question  unsolved  at  the  ad- 
vent of  Jesus — finds  a  satisfying  answer  in  Jesus's 
physical  Resurrection.  That  death  and  evil — so 
far  as  one  can  speak  of  these  in  the  psychological 
qualities  of  the  animal  world  which  formed  the 
preliminary  stage  of  the  human, — were  in  the 
world  before  the  appearance  of  man,  geology  has 
proved  beyond  all  question.  The  idea  that  through 
the  Fall  of  the  first  human  pair  death  and  evil 
came  into  the  universe,  has  long  been  abandoned 
by  theologians ;  their  support  of  it  was  simply  due 
to  ignorance  of  the  results  of  Natural  Science  and 
a  wrong  exegesis  of  Romans  v.  12.  In  this  passage 
we  read :  "  By  one  man  sin  entered  into  the  world, 
and  death  by  sin  ".  We  usually  take  for  granted 
that  "  world  "  here  means  the  same  as  universe, 
whereas,  according  to  the  whole  context,  "  world  " 
only  means  humanity.  On  all  these  problems  the 
Resurrection  of  Jesus  and  its  consequences  throw 
an  illuminating  light.  We  now  see  that  the 
whole  present  course  of  the  universe,  with  its  law 
of  struggle,  evolution,  and  death— a  law  to  which 


JESUS  CHRIST  249 

everything  is  subject — forms  only  a  preliminary 
stage  of  some  higher  and  perfect  existence  in 
which  death  and  evil  have  no  place.  Paul  puts 
this  (in  Romans  viii.  20)  briefly  in  words  of  un- 
surpassable wealth :  "  The  creature  was  made 
subject  to  vanity,  not  willingly,  but  by  reason  of 
Him  who  subjected  the  same  in  hope  ".  On  this 
view,  the  whole  universe,  as  it  now  exists,  is 
based  on  a  plan  of  hope,  on  something  future, 
permanent,  and  perfect.  Its  present  condition 
only  reveals  the  preliminary  stages  of  a  goal  yet 
to  be  attained,  the  way  to  which,  a  way  on 
which  we  find  ourselves,  is  one  of  evolution 
through  struggle  and  transiency.  Hence  we  can 
understand  the  existence  of  death  and  evil,  and 
even  the  possibility  and  actual  reality  of  wicked- 
ness in  the  world.  It  is  all  sown  in  hope,  and 
the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  assures  us  that  this 
hope  has  a  foundation. 

How  rich  and  satisfying  is  the  optimism  of  such 
a  view  of  the  world,  as  opposed  to  the  naturalistic 
view !  The  latter  only  sees  in  the  course  of  the 
world  an  eternal  revolution,  in  which  individual 
men  and  humanity,  with  all  their  achievements 

and   experiences,  appear  as  a   wave   in  the   sea, 

16* 


250  THE  PERSON  OF 

which  rises  to  vanish  for  ever.  And  more.  The 
Christian  view  of  the  world  comes  into  no  collision 
with  that  of  Natural  Science.  Science  certainly 
has  to  investigate  the  natural  side  of  all  that 
happens  or  has  happened  in  the  world,  and  the 
narrative  of  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  must  so  far 
fall  within  the  range  of  scientific  scrutiny,  once  it 
is  related  as  fact  in  a  trustworthy  manner.  But 
Science  has  no  right  to  do  more  than  scrutinise 
it.  For  in  all  the  accounts  of  the  Resurrection  of 
Jesus,  the  details  of  the  occurrence  on  its  natural 
side  are  wanting  ;  in  fact,  this  beginning  of  a  new 
order  of  being  is  veiled  in  the  same  obscurity  as  are 
all  beginnings  of  life.  And  we  have  shown  already 
that,  on  the  question  of  the  uniqueness  of  Jesus, 
Science  cannot  raise  any  objections,  provided  that 
the  unique  experiences  of  this  unique  personality 
are  recorded  in  a  trustworthy  fashion. 

But  religion  as  well  as  Science  has  reason  to 
confess  the  limitations  of  its  knowledge,  and  to 
abide  by  these  limitations.  Certain  as  the  Resur- 
rection of  Jesus  has  made  us  that  our  hopes  con- 
cerning our  own  personality,  humanity,  and  the 
whole  universe  will  be  fulfilled,  the  problem 
of   the    time    and    method    of    this   fulfilment    is 


JESUS  CHRIST  251 

enveloped  in  a  scarcely  transparent  veil,  and  only 
unsubstantial  forms  would  emerge  if  we  sought 
to  lift  it  in  our  own  strength.  Better  for  us  to 
rest  content  with  the  hopeful  prospect  we  enjoy ! 
Better,  meantime,  to  execute  the  tasks  that  God 
has  appointed  to  us  here  below,  till  for  us  too 
the  veil  is  taken  away. 


Finis 


THE    ABERDEEN    UNIVERSITY    PRESS    LIMITED 


